Sacking Fleck now would just be playing to the gallery
The irony of the latest round of Super Rugby was that the biggest gain by an SA team was made by a franchise which, if prematch speculation is to be believed, was about to jettison its coach.
While the Bulls picked up five points for their win over the Reds and the Stormers gotone less against the Rebels, it needs to be remembered that the Stormers were playing away, and what comes after this.
Though the Stormers only managed to get five points from their tour, their difficult fourgame trip is over and they only trail the conference-leading Bulls by five points. The Bulls still have their tour to come. So do the Sharks, who have now lost three home games.
The Stormers play six of their remaining eight games at Newlands.
Which brings us to the subject of Robbie Fleck, and the decision believed to have been made this past week that if the Stormers lost their last tour game it would be the end of him now rather than when his contract runs out at the end of the season.
Such a decision makes no sense. Apparently the view up high was that another Stormers defeat, leaving them with three wins in eight starts, would mean the season should be written off and a rebuild should be started.
Why? While the Stormers were losing some tightly contested games overseas, the other teams in their conference were imploding, sometimes quite spectacularly, on their home fields.
So given that the bulk of the rest of their season will be played at home, and that nine is the magical number of wins most coaches consider to be enough to secure a place in the playoffs, they would have been far from out of the race even had they lost in Melbourne.
Fleck’s away record has been his big shortcoming as Stormers coach. By contrast he has a great record at Newlands, certainly in league play.
So dropping him at this point would have been akin to leaving out your fast bowler when he has played in all the tour games you’ve played on flat, spinning wickets just when you get to the fast-paced green top.
Where dropping Fleck really makes no sense is if you consider how inexperienced, in Super Rugby terms, the Stormers management team is. Besides Fleck, Paul Feeney is the only coach who has been involved in Super Rugby before.
They’ve also now lost the sounding board that used to be provided by the well-travelled director of rugby, Gert Smal.
John Dobson will be taking over in 2020, but if you asked
Dobson he would tell you he would much rather learn from Fleck now in preparation for his future role than find himself being pitchforked into the deep end of a campaign he was not expecting to be taking charge of.
There is sometimes an argument in favour of bringing new voices in, but aren’t those new voices already in the Stormers’ management team?
While Dobson is one of Fleck’s assistant coaches, his two long-serving right-hand men are also working with Fleck. Judging by feedback from the camp, they are doing so harmoniously and efficiently.
But rugby logic hasn’t always been the strong point of the people running WP, and it brings me back to the point made often in 2019: how is it possible that professional rugby decisions can still be directed by amateur officials elected out of the club game and who depend on populous appeal for their positions?
In a Cape rugby environment where knee-jerk hysteria is the perennial followup to any perceived rugby failure, it isn’t difficult to understand why elected officials might want to sack Fleck they would be seen to be taking strong action.
But they would also be playing to the gallery and working for their own interests rather than those of Western Province Rugby. It has been obvious since the start of 2019 that an anti-Fleck agenda, formed from an ill-informed and erroneous perception that he is the only WP coach to have a problem with former assistant coach Paul Treu, is in play.
From a rugby viewpoint, sacking Fleck at this point would be nonsensical and would only negatively affect the new coaches who, after this initial learning period, will go it alone in 2020.
Fortunately for them, an under-strength Stormers team dug deep to win an important game at the end of a tiring and demanding tour.
Moreover, they did it with a passion and determination that sent out a clear message that the Stormers are not a team coached by someone who has lost the changeroom. The opening performance against the Bulls notwithstanding, that has tended to be the case.
There may well be a group of people in whom the Stormers rightly have little confidence, but it isn’t the coaches.