The word “interference” is cropping up a bit in SA rugby at the moment. At the Lions and Sharks the existence of interference is being regarded as a hamstring to the hopes of the unions/franchises. At the Stormers, the absence of interference is being held up as the reason for their success.
Let’s start with the Lions. The Lions management have denied claims there have been complaints from the coaches about too much interference from CEO Rudolf Straeuli, but where there is smoke there is usually fire.
It’s easy to understand why Straeuli would interfere, if that is what he does. For he was a coach himself once. Arguably he might have been a much better coach had he not been pushed into the Springbok role many years before he was ready. The interference — and let’s be honest, those rumours started back when Swys de Bruin resigned as Lions coach — comes from someone who at least has spent his life in the game.
In Durban it is different. The marriage between the Sharks and their American investors is starting to look an imperfect union because while the equity partners are good people, they don’t have the feel for the game required if you are going to be as hands on as they apparently are being in the running of the franchise.
I was one of the first to champion the cause of MVM when they were courting Western Province a few years back, but judging from what I am hearing from people around the Sharks camp, Cape rugby dodged a bullet by not signing up. Zelt Marais, the WP president at the time, has taken a lot of flak in this column, but walking out on what was looking a done deal back in 2020 was one thing he did right.
There’s a good chance John Plumtree will return as Sharks coach and if he does, that will be a great move for the Durban franchise. The 10 years that have passed since the experienced Brian van Zyl was replaced as CEO and then the new man walked in and sacked Plumtree in his first week on the job have been a comedy of errors for the Sharks.
But if Plumtree signs back on without getting enshrined in his contract his right to work independently and without interference from people who maybe possess 0.0005% of his rugby experience, then he’d be selling both himself and rugby in the region short. The Sharks need to get their culture right, and their head coach needs to be in charge of that process.
Juxtaposed with the Lions and Sharks experience is that of the Stormers. I am away taking a holiday on the Eastern Cape Wild Coast so didn’t watch the game, but Western Province’s win over the Bulls was another huge statement of the growth of rugby in the region under the coaching of John Dobson. WP went to Pretoria treating the Currie Cup as what it has become — a development competition.
By contrast, the Pretoria union seemed to be caught in a time warp. They went into the game with their full United Rugby Championship-strength team. To go to Pretoria and win while testing reserve depth against a full-strength Bulls team speaks volumes of the progress at the Stormers, and the Bulls’ decision to go full strength painted them into a corner and backfired spectacularly.
If you cast your minds back two years, the upswing in the WP fortunes in comparison to the problems being confronted by the other franchises is remarkable, but also easy to understand when you give it some thought.
If you speak to coaches at the other unions/franchises there is a lot of respect for what Dobson has done in the Cape, but at the same time an acknowledgment that the Stormers/WP have come right because the days of interference from administrators have at least been temporarily halted by the Saru administration of the WP union.
Dobson was told by the Saru administrator, Rian Oberholzer, that he gets judged on what happens in the season once it is over. How he goes about his business in the meantime is up to him. The no-interference policy has worked wonders.
It is debatable interference has anything to do with the Bulls’ travails. It might be that they have the opposite problem. But certainly it is interesting to juxtapose the Stormers’ successful rise to becoming a big player with what is happening at the other two franchises.
What’s happening at the Stormers is an endorsement of what can be achieved if you appoint the right coach and then let him get on with it. If the Lions aren’t happy with their coaches, they need to make changes and bring in someone that Straueli does trust. And then he needs to butt out and let that coach get on with it. The same holds true for the Sharks.
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