It has been a week of big issues at the Bulls and Sharks, and there might be an impact on the Springboks as they start their end-of-year tour by playing Japan at Wembley on Saturday.
The Bulls’ issue is Jan-Hendrik Wessels, whom they weren’t able to use against Glasgow Warriors in their fifth-round United Rugby Championship (URC) game because he was suspended for grabbing a Connacht player’s groin. Wessels is at this point out for nine weeks, pending an appeal, and appears unlikely to feature on the Bok tour now.
Which is a big loss for Rassie Erasmus’s squad, as Wessels is emerging as the new Malcolm Marx at hooker and the new Ox Nché at loosehead prop.
We haven’t seen a full judgment yet, so I won’t comment at length, but if it is true that Wessels was suspended on the say-so of the Connacht player and without video evidence, then I have to concur with the view of the national coach. It’s ridiculous, and it sets a dangerous precedent in that in the future, URC players could feel they just have to make a complaint and there could be a sanction against an opposing player.
Like the “wit kant” saga regarding Bongi Mbonambi that nearly derailed the Bok buildup to the most recent World Cup final, there needs to be evidence, and if there isn’t, there should be no sanction.
The Sharks’ issues stem from the vultures referred to last week circling coach John Plumtree. I am hearing that a change will be made this week. Hopefully that change will be made to the management structure and to the coach, for surely the Sharks’ travails have been too long-standing now for the coach to continue to be blamed.
The in and out door to the head coach’s offices has been swinging at a merry rate ever since the Sharks bosses, many of whom are still there but should be held more accountable for Sharks underachievement than the coaches are, thought it was clever to bring in John Smit, a recently retired player with no management experience, as the CEO to replace the experienced Brian van Zyl.
It was always going to be a disaster and nice man though Gary Teichmann is, he would probably be the first to agree that choosing him to follow Smit, also based on what he’d done as a player, was also not smart management. Teichmann hadn’t really kept up with the modern game and faced challenges he didn’t know existed.
Then came the Americans. The man who heads the consortium, Marco Massotti, should take a lot of responsibility too. When Western Province spurned his approaches, he embarked on an ego-contracting splurge, bringing in top Boks from that region and elsewhere, and in doing so taking the rug out from underneath then-coach Sean Everitt.
Everitt had done well in his first season at the Sharks, who topped the Super Rugby log when Covid-19 arrived. The side featured mostly players he’d worked with at age-group level, and he had a plan.
But he had no say in the contracting, and when you have the national captain on your books and other players being paid many millions to be there, you have to select them. The balance of his team, with a ball-scavenging openside flank being so important to him, went out the window.
When Eduard Coetzee was CEO, his knee-jerk reaction to failure was to bring in a Sevens coach, Neil Powell, as director of rugby while also continuing with the recruitment director, who so many close to the Sharks felt was a big part of the problem.
There’s been a lot of fudging and lack of clarity about who is in charge ever since. Massotti needs to show his own leadership ability now by making it clear that Plumtree is the sole leader and giving him the right to choose his own management team.
In short, let him show if he can lead or not. If he can’t, then you sack him, but not before you’ve given him that chance.
