Transformation not just ‘tick-box exercise’
New SA Rugby president confirms changes are mooted for Super franchises
TRANSFORMATION is “not a tick-box exercise” for SA Rugby, although ensuring that the policy is implemented could secure hosting rights for the 2023 World Cup that may create over 38 000 permanent or temporary jobs.
That was the word from newly-elected SA Rugby president Mark Alexander yesterday after he was voted in unopposed at a special general council meeting in Johannesburg until the next elections in 2018.
Transformation has been viewed almost as a “necessary evil” in some quarters of the South African rugby landscape since unity in 1992. There has seldom been a willingness to fully embrace the concept of providing equal opportunities for people of colour on the field and in the boardrooms, and the lack of representativity in rugby resulted in Minister of Sport and Recreation Fikile Mbalula withdrawing hosting rights for major international events. SA Rugby have been named as a candidate to host the 2023 Rugby World Cup, but the organisation will have to make serious progress in the coming months to sway the Eminent Persons Group to agree to recommend that the hosting rights be reinstated so that an official final bid for the tournament can be submitted.
“Transformation for us is not a ‘tickbox’ exercise; it is a business imperative for rugby to stay vibrant and relevant as a sport in an evolving South Africa,” Alexander said in a statement yesterday.
“Rugby has its challenges, but there are great opportunities for the sport and for what it can do for South Africa.”
But to reach that point, Alexander and his executive will have to attract new sponsors to the game – an issue that was highlighted at last week’s indaba in Cape Town – and one possibility will be to change the structure of SA Rugby’s organisation.
The Springbok team itself has had a sponsor this year who has signed on a tournament-by-tournament basis, having first featured during the Ireland series in June. The company extended the deal in August for the Rugby Championship and the end-of-year tour to Europe, but SA Rugby would prefer to have a long-term sponsor in place for a number of years.
And the Super Rugby teams and provincial unions need to be a part of that picture, which is why SA Rugby intend to separate the two, which the organisation said has resulted in proposed amendments to the constitution that are set to be tabled at the General Council meeting in December. It could see the six SA Super Rugby teams partly owned by private companies. “We are proposing to overhaul our committee structure with the establishment ALSO INSIDE: Rabada eyeballs Smith, P30 Eddie Jones in Portugal, P30 Soweto derby build-up, P31