Rugby politics and a tradition of losing have broken the Lions
DEAD men walking. That’s the status of the Lions, who are like the condemned man who knows his execution is coming, just not when.
On Thursday, the learned men of local rugby put their heads together for the umpteenth time to resolve the issue of accommodating the Kings without hurting one of the existing teams. They left the meeting scratching their heads.
Like the unscrambling of an omelette, some things are plain impossible. Six cannot go into five no matter how you slice it and dice it.
The franchises meet again with SA Rugby tomorrow, but it’s difficult not to believe this is an exercise in futility.
Rightly or wrongly, the Kings have been guaranteed their spot – a home must be found for them. Every instinct points to the Lions being the fall guys. From coach John Mitchell’s ambivalent remarks to the team’s resigned way of play, the signs are that they have gone to the wall.
There is speculation that SA Rugby will attempt to prop up whichever team gives way, an artificial construct if you like, by arranging matches against second-tier teams like Canada and the US. A shabby second prize.
For all the Lions’ confident talk of rescuing their status, you can be sure internal talks have considered the ghastly alternative of being dumped.
The prospect of continuing without Super Rugby is bleak.
“They would go into liquidation,” a top agent warned this week. It’s that bad. For a start, the franchise would haemorrhage players.
Without top flight competi- tion, they would scatter to all four corners of the country. Sponsors would bolt and gate revenue would dry up.
Only SA Rugby’s annual contribution would keep it afloat. But for how long?
The remarkable thing is how it ever came to this?
Less than two decades ago, Louis Luyt built a fortress. Despite his dictatorial nature – or perhaps because of it – he made the former Transvaal an international powerhouse.
They won the 1994 Currie Cup and Lions fans naturally boasted how that team went on to win the 1995 World Cup, in a manner of speaking.
But the lion of Ellis Park’s messy departure, hastened by his poor decision to haul Nelson Mandela to court in 1998, was the beginning of the end of Transvaal’s power base.
Jomo King’s subsequent emergence as a president of great promise was dashed a few years later when he dropped dead. That was almost 10 years ago and since then the Lions have flapped and flailed, neither here nor there, as a major player.
They won the inaugural Super 10 competition in 1993, but haven’t so much as sniffed a Super title since with nearly all their top players abandoning ship. Their Currie Cup win last year was magnificent, and credit to president Kevin de Klerk’s yeoman work to turn things around, but it was also an aberration.
The Lions’ Super Rugby record is appalling – 15 wins in 79 matches and they have made it devilishly difficult to defend them on the basis that they somehow “belong”.
The Lions are now broken; broken by a tradition of losing, broken by the fiendish nature of rugby politics and broken by the Sword of Damocles hanging over them.
As one player despaired last week, how are you meant to focus not knowing where you will be next year, not knowing what to tell your girlfriend/ wife, not knowing whether you will even be contracted?
The Lions have been playing like haunted men because that’s precisely what they are.
The one redeeming, and perhaps surprising, feature of their battle for survival is that they have the support of their Super Rugby brethren. They all voted for the inclusion of the Kings, but not at the exclusion of an existing franchise.
The problem was assuming that Sanzar, sitting in their ivory tower in Sydney, would accept South Africa’s proposal for a sixth team.
They didn’t and that’s when things became messy. It’s extraordinary to contemplate a major southern hemisphere competition that doesn’t feature a team from the commercial hub of the continent.
You wonder how it ever got this bad. And then you remember that it was ever thus in South African rugby.