Still no change Too few black coaches at top of South African rugby
All teams fall short of the five-year transformation plan
● SA Rugby’s five-year strategic transformation plan that should be coming to fruition this year says there should be 50% black coaches involved at elite coaching levels.
This target has not been achieved by SA’s four Super Rugby sides, along with the Cheetahs who together with the Southern Kings played in the Pro14 tournament.
The Cheetahs in particular are worst offenders. Their current Pro14 coaching group, led by former Springbok assistant coach Franco Smith, has no members of colour in its ranks.
The Bulls (Hayden Groepes), Sharks (Ricardo Loubscher) and Lions (Johannes “Joey” Mongalo) have one black coach in their coaching complements that consist of six, four and five members respectively.
The Southern Kings, who are the only franchise that employs a black head coach in Deon Davids, have two other black assistants in former senior provincial player Chumani Booi and Sivuyile Kobokana, who is the Eastern Province Elephants’ forwards coach but is interning as an assistant coach with the Pro14 side.
If the sides are graded in terms of the 50% SA Rugby strategic transformation plan in place over the five-year period that ends this year, the Sharks (25%), Bulls (16.6%) and the Lions (20%) all failed to meet the criteria.
The same applies for the Stormers, who had only Paul Treu employed as a black coach in their seven-strong coaching group led by Robbie Fleck.
The Stormers, though, still have to confirm their coaching group for this year’s Super Rugby tournament that starts on February 15.
Free State Cheetahs chief executive officer Harold Verster said he did not have the required information in front of him to comment fully on the state of the team’s coaching transformation.
“I haven’t got the information with me and we can only respond at a later stage. We can’t say a single word and the Cheetahs can only respond later when we have all the necessary details,” Verster said.
How the Cheetahs coaching staff looks now from a racial demographic perspective has not changed from when the franchise played Super Rugby when the strategic plan was put in place in 2014.
At the time, the Cheetahs were coached by Naka Drotske, who was assisted by Hawies Fourie, Pieter “Os” du Randt and Michael Horak.
During the same year, the Sharks were coached by 2007 World Cup-winning mentor Jake White and he was assisted by Sean Everitt, Brad McLeod-Henderson and Paul Anthony.
The Bulls were coached by Frans Ludeke and he was assisted by Victor Matfield (who went back to playing later in 2014), Pine Pienaar (back as the defence coach under the current Super Rugby coach Gerhard “Pote” Human) and Pieter Rossouw (who is now at Paarl Gymnasium).
Former Springbok coach Allister Coetzee was in charge of the Stormers in 2014 and he was flanked by Matt Proudfoot (current Springbok assistant coach), Fleck and Dawie Snyman.
The Lions, who returned to
Super Rugby in 2014 after a rel-
I haven’t got the information with me and we can only respond at a later stage
egation-enforced break the year before, were led by Johan Ackermann and his assistants were Swys de Bruin (current Lions Super Rugby head coach) and JP Ferreira.
While a vast majority of coaching changes have taken place in the past five years, the demographics of the coaching landscape hasn’t changed.
David Manuel (Bulls), Loubscher, Mongalo and Treu were the only senior black coaching appointments at Super Rugby level for the franchises in this five-year gap.
Coetzee and Davids have been the only black Super Rugby head coaches in this fiveyear period.
SA Rugby, whose offices open for the year tomorrow, was not in a position to comment on this perilous state of coaching transformation.
The Sharks, Bulls, Stormers and Lions were not available for comment at the time of going to print. All four said they would respond at a later stage.