Zondagh’s grip tightens as heads roll at Loftus
It’s evolution, not revolution, insists Alan Zondagh as the winds of change continue to sweep through high office at Loftus.
This week the much-maligned high performance manager Xander Janse van Rensburg unexpectedly resigned which means the franchise has now lost all decision makers in key positions in the past year.
Zondagh, who took over as director of rugby last November, says the franchise isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, but that realignment was now unavoidable to help make the franchise more sustainable. “I would rather say evolution. I think with a revolution a bomb goes off. We are not trying to do that. I’m trying to implement a new structure which the board approved this week.”
He said the new rugby performance division will be geared towards better communication. “In it we’ll have six different departments servicing junior and senior rugby. It’s not a major change. It is simplified and more streamlined. It has been received with a lot of enthusiasm by the people working here,” said Zondagh, who will take over much of what Janse van Rensburg did.
“He was the high-performance manager,” reminded Zondagh. “It was not really a performance job. He was more involved with the recruitment. There is no longer a high-performance manager here. That is taken over by the director of rugby. I will take care of coaching, recruitment, everything.
“Xander was not involved in coaching. I’m here to upskill the coaches in the system from Pote (Human, head coach) right down to the junior coaches. I’ve got the expertise to do that. Xander didn’t do that, he doesn’t have the expertise. He has a law background. That part of his job has been simplified and is called player affairs which will also look after player welfare,” said Zondagh.
In the last year a new president, CEO, director of coaching, high-performance manager, head coach and captain have been installed at Loftus but now Zondagh has to roll up his sleeves to slash the players’ wage bill.
“Like everybody else. We can’t carry on like this. We can’t survive going on like that.” He envisaged slashing the number of contracted players from between 170 and 180 to about 80.
He also wants to place greater emphasis on improving individuals.
“Not just here but elsewhere all over the country we don’t individually improve the players. We improve team performance but individually we don’t take players to the next level. I want to change the emphasis, not taking away team preparation to win games but in that process we must still be busy improving each player.”
To that end he’s introduced a skills department which will operate on a par with medical, mental as well as strength and conditioning. “For all those things we have tests and if something is wrong we have remedies and yet we don’t have that in a pure rugby sense. The skills department will evaluate the player.”
With such a change of emphasis, how will he measure success this year?
“We need to win more games than last year (they only won six). Also, we are in the entertainment business. People want to see winners. We need to start well to get the hype going again.”