Sponsorship eludes rugby
Not too far from Botswana’s border, rugby enjoys multi-million pula sponsorships. In 2021, MTN, the South African mobile phone operator, extended its headline sponsorship deal with the Springboks, the country’s men’s national rugby team, until 2025.
The original deal was worth between R40 million and R50 million per year, according to South African reports.
In October 2020, SA Rugby extended its sponsorship deal with First National Bank for a further five years. But locally there is a dearth as the Botswana Rugby Union (BRU) fires sponsorship blanks. The BRU is preparing for the start of activities but nothing is forthcoming in terms of sponsorship deals.
The BRU secretary-general, Boitshoko Tsiane said lack of sponsorship kills motivation.
“It is not nice for motivation. Hope is not lost because we are working on something with potential sponsors. Our league is still struggling with sponsorship but we managed to secure something for the senior men’s team and referees,” he said.
Rugby is preparing to kick off their activities with the Sevens tournament this month. Tsiane said the tournament is meant to assist the national team players to prepare for the Africa Cup Sevens to be played in Uganda next month.
He said the 15s team gets back to the ground in May.
Despite the bleak financial situation, clubs are preparing for the return to action. One of the clubs to look out this season is UB Rhinos as they make a return to top-flight rugby after relegating to the President Cup last season. Khina Masinki, the
Rhinos coach, said his side is ready for action. “We have recruited a lot of young players, which means we are going to play in the top-tier league and B Division. Some of them are playing for the first time while some played during the BISA (Botswana Integrated Sports Association) games. What is happening is that we are assisting the Sevens national team,” he said.
Masinki said some players from the 2019 team are still active. He said others are not playing and it seems like the two-year layoff affected their passion. Masinki said despite being inactive, former players will coach the B team.
He added that Rhinos have enough front row players, which is a minimum requirement to play in the Super League.
The BDF Cheetahs team manager, Modesto Madzambi said they are preparing for the tournament but the team is limping. He said some of the players such as Aubrey Sello and Magate Gaboratanelwe have retired.
“We are trying to recruit some players to join and we recently held trials. We are looking in to bringing in fresh boots into our squad. On the bright side, we had two players in the national Sevens team,
Matenanga Matenanga and Kagiso Molefhi. The coach, Kabo Batsile is ours,” he said. The Hogs coach, Shaun Lees said preparations are going well and he is trying to figure out player combinations because national Sevens players are missing.
“We would field a fairly young team, possibly two, this season due to the great number coming down for practice sessions. But I am happy with the overall fitness of the boys and I believe they are ready,” he said.
Lees is also involved in the national Sevens team. Regarding the national team, he said the squad continued with training sessions from the time they returned from Lesotho.
He said they have to work on areas of concern such as strength and conditioning as well as attack and defensive structure.
“We thought it was best to keep the squad together up until we depart for Uganda in April because they need to play together for them to gel as a squad. They will take part in the local Sevens circuits as well as other tournaments we have been invited to outside the country,” Lees said.
Meanwhile, Lees said the national team performed fairly well in Lesotho given that they were coming from a two-year layoff.
Lesotho hosted the Rugby Africa Regional Sevens-South in January.
The tournament doubled as a qualifier for the Africa Women’s Sevens as well as for the Sevens World Cup and Commonwealth Games.
“We went to Lesotho to qualify for the Africa Men’s Sevens and we managed to achieve that. Although we qualified there were a couple of areas of concern especially in defence and overall match fitness,” he said.
Lees said they will try and rectify the mistakes from the Lesotho trip.