No post-Covid respirator in SA Rugby
● The demise of the Valke’s professional wing has brought the sustainability of the number of professional rugby teams in SA into sharp focus.
A post-apocalyptic landscape is envisioned once the worst of Covid-19 has passed and SA Rugby will no longer be able to keep struggling provincial unions on a respirator. They may be faced with the deeply unpalatable decision of which switches to flick in determining which teams can survive as professional entities.
The local game has already embarked upon a process to drastically reduce the number of professional players in the country.
Eight teams have franchise licences, and teams destined to play in the Currie Cup first division barely get by as semi-professional.
Some, as the pandemic has highlighted in the case of the Valke, sail close to the wind, leaving nature to take its course.
They are not the first union blown off course. Eastern Province was liquidated in 2016 and Border was provisionally sequestrated in 2018.
Bigger unions are not impervious to buffeting gusts. Western Province had its commercial arm liquidated in 2016, and the Lions and Bulls have undergone cut-to-the-bone restructuring in the past decade.
“When the industry savings plan was devised, the point was made that the unions that don’t have their house in order will be caught out,” said Piet Heymans, CE of the trade union Sport Employees Unite.
“Once Covid hit there was nowhere to hide. SA Rugby has been trying to help, but they can’t help anymore.”
SA Rugby faces stark realities if the Springboks don’t play in the Rugby Championship in October. In the past they were able to bring relief to unions in distress with low-interest loans. That well is now dry.
“The business model of our rugby will have to be addressed quite drastically,” said Heymans. “The Covid-19 pandemic has forced everyone in rugby to ask whether the current system is sustainable.”
It is a question former Currie Cup-winning coach Eugene van Wyk has long grappled with. Van Wyk has remained relevant as the pragmatic CE of the Griffons.
He said, financially, the Griffons are likely to weather the storm. “We agreed that we’d contract our players for eight months until the end of August.
“By then, apart from the play-offs, the First Division would have run its course.
“Then Covid struck. We agreed the players would still get paid, but that the competition would be scrapped because we weren’t making money anyway.
“That meant we didn’t have expenses like travel, petrol, kit, training, etc. So our rugby stopped, but financially we are actually OK.”
The Griffons run a tight ship, but elsewhere provinces are treading water.
“In 2018 I went to Border on a membership drive expecting about 12 employees to attend a meeting,” said Heymans.
“Instead 35 showed up. That was excluding the players who numbered about 30. You can’t run a small union like that.
“Now they’re gone. There was no corporate governance.”