No CEO in the business world would have survived the Springboks’ equivalent of 2016. Shareholders would have demanded resignations.
The Springboks are sold as a global brand and rugby in SA is a profession. But there is no integrity in the leadership.
SA Rugby president Mark Alexander’s only public uttering to the Springboks record defeat against the All Blacks in
Durban was to promote the virtues of a national coaching indaba aimed at supporting coach Allister Coetzee’s disastrous debut season.
Ironically, the only former national coaches called to provide counsel were also the only two in SA’s history to concede 50 plus points against the All Blacks.
Peter de Villiers, whose Springboks beat the All Blacks three times in succession in 2009, was not invited.
Jake White, also victorious against the All Blacks and a winner of the 2004 Tri Nations and 2007 Rugby World Cup, was not invited. White publicly stated he was available to provide whatever assistance and that he was only a phone call away.
White reiterated his belief in Bok rugby and that he wanted to be part of the solution. No one within Saru had the decency to respond to White. Coetzee, assistant coach to White’s Boks between 2004 and 2007, was equally disinterested.
Rugby coaching ability and professional pedigree played no part in Coetzee’s Bok appointment. CE (Jurie) Roux trumpeted Coetzee’s appointment as a new era, one made on the belief he was the best qualified and also one reaffirming SA Rugby’s commitment to transformation.
Coetzee’s assistant coaches lacked pedigree or professional experience. Specialist defence, ruck, kicking and lineout coaches and consultants were deemed superfluous.
Coetzee and the suited ones who made the appointment lauded what they called the start of something special.
SuperSport’s rugby commentators tried to make a case of this being an era like no other. It was painful to watch and insulting to the Bok supporter.
Its rhetoric was also an insult to transformation when Coetzee’s initial squad of 31 to play Ireland included 13 players of colour, but when the third and deciding Test of the series against Ireland was completed only three players of colour were on the field.
Coetzee’s Boks lost the first Test in Cape Town against an Ireland team reduced to 14 players for 60 minutes, and that quota of three was again prominent in the team that started against England at Twickenham.
Transformation is being misrepresented, yet it was a convenient excuse for so many on social media.
Coetzee’s Bok tenure has been as disgraceful in the lack of accountability as it has been in the embarrassment of four wins in 10 starts.
Coetzee, as selector and head coach, has failed and so has his game plan. He is not good enough and refuses to accept that his limitations are primary to the failures.
The players’ respective interviews after so many of the season’s defeats have consistently detailed a failure on defence, a failure to adapt to balance, the inability to cope with pressure, and captain Adrian Strauss in too many postmatch defeat summaries excused the result by saying the Boks were not good enough.
It all explains the shambles.
My view, in this column on Friday, was England would win by 17 to 20 points and that it was madness to expect any other result given the pedigree of the England coaches and a nine-Test unbeaten season.
So many refused to accept the rugby reality. It was easier to claim blind faith as a strong enough remedy for the Boks.
But the message won’t change because the man responsible for the detail in the message has no regrets about a 40% win record.
Transformation is also a 12 white, 3 black split. How unpatriotic and negative of those of us to want more and to demand consequence to continued failure.
How wonderfully patriotic, comforting and positive of Coetzee to confirm to Bok supporters that all is well and that the Boks aura is safe because, as he explained it, an aura is not something that is earned through results.
The leadership has spoken. The accepted standard is 40%. To want more is an act of negativity.
• Keohane is editor of SARugby Magazine. Read him on www.sarugbymag.co.za and twitter.com/mark_keohane
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