Powell’s Blitzboks, Joost and poor leadership … all that is good, sad and bad of SA rugby
The good in South African rugby is the Blitzbokke, the sad is Joost van der Westhuizen and the bad is the South African Rugby Union leadership and the continued failings around Springbok coach Allistair Coetzee. Neil Powell’s Blitzbokke were magnificent in dismantling England to claim a third win in four World Series tournaments this season; second only to New Zealand’s five successive tournament wins a decade ago.
Joost’s failing health, as reported on the front page of Rapport, is the sad news. He is a Springbok legend and among the more revered internationally, but it is the strength of his seven-year battle with motor neuron disease that has overshadowed his rugby brilliance for the Bulls and Springboks.
Joost, at the time of writing, was in hospital and still fighting an illness most experts predicted would end his life five years ago. Rapport used an image of Joost making his most famous pass to Joel Stransky in the 1995 World Cup final win against the All Blacks. It took me back to being in the media box at Ellis Park that afternoon. What a moment. What a final. What an extraordinary day for the Springboks and for SA.
It is the memory of days like that colossal day in June, 1995, that must be revisited to ensure mediocrity is not accepted as a natural consequence of Springbok rugby’s dismal 2016 season. The Boks of 2016 are infamous for creating the wrong kind of history, as the first Boks to lose eight Tests in a calendar year. Coetzee’s coaching failures will have no immediate consequence because of the failures of the Saru leadership, who giftwrapped him a four-year national contract with the luxury of no performance clause in year one.
Coetzee will now apparently be judged on a three-Test series against France and, while all the focus is on Coetzee, those who made the initial appointment survive without accountability.
The Springboks will always have a future of sorts because of the player base in SA, the passion of the rugby supporter and because there will always be an influential sponsor or investor who wants to align with the Springboks.
People’s passion and sponsors’ goodwill are a blessing and a curse because it allows for the survival of a leadership that constantly displays an arrogance and disregard for public sentiment and for investors.
Coetzee should never have been appointed and his results should have dictated his removal as Bok coach. Why should beating France be the measurement of continued investment in Coetzee as the Bok coach? France, in their last three Tests, have lost to Australia, New Zealand and England. Before that, in 2016, they lost to Scotland and Ireland and Wales and England.
Beating France, ranked eighth in the world, should be a given. Coetzee’s Boks, in a year, dropped from a world ranking of three to a historic low of six.
The public can only protest through not paying to go to stadiums or not watching on television. This has already happened in Super Rugby with 2016 attendance at a low and television ratings the poorest in the competition’s history.
The rugby media, by way of accurate storytelling, can only reinforce the situation but it is the money investors — by way of sponsorship and advertising — and broadcasters, who realistically can make demands and ultimately a difference.
It is these investors who have to apply the same principles they do to their business and who have to refuse to accept being aligned with second best, questionable governance of the sport and equally questionable decisionmaking in relation to the Springboks. Every South African who loves rugby wants a strong collective Super Rugby challenge and a Springbok team whose results and team ethic deserves and demands global respect. Good news sells more than bad news.
The Springbok coaching job, alongside that of New Zealand, should be the most prized rugby appointment in the game.
The search should be for the best one to lead Springbok rugby and not for a failing coach to beat (in SA) the eighthbest team in the world to remain Bok coach.
Those who invest financially so generously in South African rugby must be the revolutionaries of change because those who govern the sport in this country will never change.
Mark Keohane is a multiple award-winning rugby writer and former Springbok communications manager. Follow him on www.twitter.com/mark_keohane
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