Straeuli’s experience has him roaring at the top of his game
When Brian van Zyl started to near the end of his long stint as CEO of the Sharks, he was grooming Rudolf Straeuli to be his successor. It was the Sharks’ loss and the Lions’ gain that it didn’t turn out that way.
History reflects that Van Zyl never saw out the end of his contracted period and was replaced by former Springbok captain and Sharks playing stalwart John Smit.
The people responsible for making that decision were going for the name and what Smit had done on the field rather than any experience accumulated in administration.
The Sharks have paid for it, with the South African rugby union credited with inventing professionalism in this country heading downhill on the field, in terms of results, and off the field in terms of finances.
Not long after the revolution that changed the whole Sharks operation in 2013, Straeuli, suspecting he didn’t have a role in the new dispensation — he was the Sharks’ commercial manager responsible for recruitment and contracting — decided to take up the position of Lions CEO.
It may not have been a coincidence that Straeuli’s arrival back at the union he had represented at the end of his playing career was the start of the Lions’ rise to their current position as the most successful union in SA.
The balance of power is now measured by what is achieved in the full-strength Super Rugby competition. The Lions were just edged out of being conference champions by a controversial draw against the Stormers in Cape Town in Straeuli’s first full season in 2015, but they haven’t looked back since.
They comfortably won the South African Conference in 2016 and 2017, playing in the final in both those years, and they look destined to make it a hat-trick of local titles in 2018.
Not that Straeuli will be happy just to be ahead locally. It is understood that after that first season, when the Lions made dramatic strides, Straeuli called in the team’s coaches, who were understandably happy with the way the campaign had gone, and dressed them down for getting ahead of themselves.
“This isn’t a time for celebration, you haven’t won anything yet,” he said, or words to that effect.
Straeuli knows a thing or two about the importance of having the CEO and the head