GAVIN RICH: Good news lifts gloom over SA rugby

There have been a few shards of sunlight shining through what was starting to be a gloomy outlook for SA rugby as a return to play becomes imminent.

First came the news of a possible windfall for SA Rugby. CEO Jurie Roux told a meeting of rugby bosses last Friday that his organisation is at an advanced stage of negotiations with the CVC private equity company which has an interest in two of the top European club competitions, the Pro14 and the English Premiership.

It is not yet known what percentage stake CVC will be looking for but it is expected to be more than 20%. They paid an estimated R2.5bn for a 28% stake in the Pro14 and R3.5bn for 27% of the Premiership.

There is good news on the Western Province front too, where I have been told the players have drawn a line in the sand and are prepared to use their power to force president Zelt Marais and his cohorts to listen to sense.

The players met Marais and apparently issued an unambiguous message — start the process of finalising the deal with US consortium MVM Holdings or we are out of here. They said they weren’t going to sign contracts with WP until the deal has been wrapped up.

It has been written that Marais has said he was given a mandate to look for an equity partner other than the US group headed by former South African Marco Masotti. But according to my sources, if Marais thinks that, then he misunderstood them.

It is high time some type of player power started to make its presence felt in Cape rugby because the mismanagement of the sport in that region has gone on for long enough and ultimately it is the players who suffer. Their predicament is more desperate than it has ever been given that unless the American deal goes through, there will be no money to pay the players.

But perhaps the biggest shard of light piercing through the clouds that have been gathering over our rugby during the time of Covid-19 is the nearness of rugby restarting. And it could happen as soon as October 3. I’ve seen two probable schedules for the seven-team domestic competition that will start SA’s return to play — one of them has the tournament starting on October 3 and ending on January 16, and the other has it starting on October 10 and ending on January 23.

The discrepancy might be because of talk we are hearing about a possible north/south game to preface the competitive season. If that is the case, it is a bad idea. A north/south game might make sense at the end of the competition, not before the competitive season starts and players are playing for the first time in six months.

There is also more of a north/south tradition in New Zealand, a country made up of two islands. SA is not made up of islands, and the north/south concept is more artificial. For instance, in the isolation era when north/south games were played annually, Free State and Natal players played for the South team. I’m not sure that makes sense from a geography perspective — KZN may be south of Mozambique or Swaziland but it is not south of anywhere in SA.

North/south games, like Sevens tournaments and State of Origin games, which was also being mooted at one stage, surely also depend on crowds being present. They are festival occasions.

There was some good rugby played in the Kiwi north/south game, but for me the lack of a crowd made it a little underwhelming.

SA rugby administrators need to be wise about how they go about returning the players to the field. There is a potential advantage to be had from the fact that players have had a proper off-season where they could get a lengthy rest, something that will benefit them from a muscular/skeletal perspective.

But it could backfire if the players are pushed into doing too much too quickly (which is why north/south games and participation in the Rugby Championship are both bad ideas), or if the changed scheduling brought about by the pandemic leads to there being no off-season after the domestic competition is concluded in January.

Without a minimum of six weeks break before the 2021 season officially starts the physiological gains made in the hiatus from rugby will be lost and we could find SA players paying the price for that when we reach next July. Which just so happens to be when the British and Irish Lions are scheduled to arrive.