Eastern Cape fertile ground for rugby academy

THE Southern Kings using the Nelson Mandela University grounds to stage their Guinness Pro14 matches is symbolic.

For rugby in the Eastern Cape to see a new dawn, universities such as the Madibaz, Walter Sisulu University (All Blacks), Fort Hare and Rhodes are the gateway to the future.

As it is, Eastern Cape rugby is in the doldrums. None of the unions – Eastern Province and Border – have made an impact in recent years.

EP and Border are locked in a cyclical battle to keep their heads above water, meanwhile the talented high school fish slip right through the net.

Having one of the best high school teams in the country – Selborne College – has not salved Border’s financial strife and neither has their stellar Craven Week team been able to halt the rot.

We constantly produce players at high school level but we lose them just as quickly, for cheap, and they go to other provinces and prosper.

We are a living paradox, an oxymoron of ourselves. We are in celebratory mode when Eastern Cape-bred players such as Aphiwe Dyantyi – who is now nominated for a World Rugby award – make it to the very top.

We look, point and beat our chests saying: “We gave birth to that child.” But we gave him away for adoption and now we want to claim him back.

A player like Siya Kolisi is an Eastern Cape investment but Western Province drew the fruits of his success.

The Grey High School old boy went on to lead the Stormers and later, as we are seeing now, the Springboks. We were his surrogates and WP were the real parents.

And there are plenty like him in very recent times, such as Jeremy Ward (Sharks), Junior Pokomela (Cheetahs), Aphelele Fassi (Sharks), Malcolm Jaer (Cheetahs), Sergeal Petersen (Western Province) and plenty others in the past who sought greener pastures elsewhere.

With the backdrop of

athriving elite schools system and a rugby culture that’s unmatched elsewhere in the country, the Eastern Cape is fertile ground for a rugby academy that brings together its foremost tertiary institutions.

There needs to be a government-backed academy that services the university athletes, which would provide them with nutritional, psychological, biokinetic as well as sporting needs.

Such an academy could operate like the SA Rugby Mobi Unit that national director Rassie Erasmus headed up, whereupon exprofessionals such as Louis Koen, Pieter de Villiers, Jacques Nienaber, Ballie Swart and the like went around the country tutoring everything from kicking to scrummaging.

It would be the best way to retain talented youngsters who mushroom from high school and are looking for a way into the game without having to venture too far from home.

Not only would the players benefit but budding young coaches could also use the academy to earn their World Rugby coaching levels and we could breed referees from it as well.

The university structures would also add the advantage of a good educational system, for which Rhodes, Fort Hare and Nelson Mandela are renowned.

I would like to go back to Dyantyi’s case. Having been told he was too small to play rugby, he put his varsity education first but the rugby bug did not leave him while he was at the University of Johannesburg.

He was a full-time student and part-time rugby player. It proved enough of a stepping-stone because not long after being spotted playing Koshuis rugby he made it into the Varsity Cup team. The rest is in the annals of history.

While the unions battle to stay afloat, while they oscillate from one financial nightmare to the next, while SA Rugby continue tinkering with the tournaments, universities can provide a beacon of hope.

*Thando Manana was recently appointed president of Madibaz Rugby at the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth.