It was a happening week in SA rugby — the Lions shook off the negativity surrounding them by winning twice, the Stormers wrapped up the SA Shield and completed a derby clean sweep in the United Rugby Championship. And the rugby supporters of the Cape won by more than 30,000 to 48 against the faction trying to keep the sport in the region back.
That was the count of one of my colleagues of the number of protesters who turned out to champion the cause of a group of disgruntled former Western Province office bearers and rugby politicians opposing the Saru administration of the union and the sale of Newlands.
As the Saru administrator Rian Oberholzer said last week, people do have a right to protest. But now that they’ve done it, and drew such a small group of supporters, the claims to represent any kind of majority or big interest group have been exposed for what they were: nonsense.
We already knew that as the group that protested before the Stormers’ home game against the Sharks is supported by only 11 out of about 100 clubs. So it was clear the weight of opinion was against them. But Saturday’s experience should have drummed it home more forcefully.
I got caught in a traffic jam on the way to the stadium in Green Point. The raised freeway route that bypasses the foreshore was gridlocked, but so was the alternative route through the city. There’s always congestion there, but it was worse than usual. A 25-minute journey ended up taking more than two hours.
But my fears that maybe the protest was causing the holdup proved unfounded. It was also Gay Pride in Cape Town on Saturday. That was what caused the bottlenecks. By all accounts, the rugby protest was a non-event by comparison.
Anchor tenants
What was a big event was the match itself. Despite there being no current first-choice Springboks playing for either side, there was a crowd of much more than 30,000. And that turnout compared with that of the protest is an overwhelming endorsement of what should have been a given all along — the Stormers don’t belong to any faction, they belong to the people of Cape Town and the Western Cape.
And in a week in which the Stormers officially became anchor tenants at DHL Stadium, an occasion at which Cape Town mayor Giordin Hill-Lewis spoke about the connectedness of the team to the city, that is an important point.
It is no coincidence that since WP has been in administration and the deflection of the internecine conflict at administrative level has disappeared, the Stormers have soared. Stormers coach John Dobson has been able to get on with the business of coaching rugby and making rugby plans without the interference and bureaucratic holdups so many of his predecessors had to put up with and that derailed a team representing SA’s most fertile rugby breeding ground.
By winning the Shield for the second successive season and with three rounds to go, and by winning all six matches against the other SA teams and thereby underlining their superiority locally, the Stormers have shown what can be done if the noise of off-field controversy is removed.
Most supporters will agree with Oberholzer’s hope that whatever decisions made going forward by WP will be for the good of rugby in the region and not just the faction that is in power at a given time. The Stormers should always be separate from the elected officials appointed to oversee amateur rugby. Those who went through the turnstiles as opposed to the less than 50 who protested was a huge repudiation of the press releases issued by the faction proclaiming mass support.
Transferring rights
While Saturday was a win for rugby, the noise may never disappear completely, so it is important to note nothing is cast in stone that says the Stormers franchise has to be connected to WP. I say that because apparently there are whispers from within the corridors of SA Rugby that if WP continues to be a problem the franchise could be transferred.
What is there to stop Saru from transferring the franchise rights to say Boland or South Western Districts, or even those two and Eastern Province to make up a wider Cape team still playing out of the stadium in Cape Town and representing the region? The Stormers should soon have equity partners to make the professional arm financially strong — they have a good stadium and backing, they just don’t need the sideshows.
The national body knows that SA rugby needs rugby in the Cape to be healthy. The region's status as a nursery for talent demands it. The Cape public loves rugby and loves supporting a winning team. Saturday showed us that. The currency of professional sport is bums on seats and the Stormers are winning that battle.
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