The last time I saw the Currie Cup, it looked a bit knackered. It had scratches, the brass was a little tarnished in places, I could have sworn it smelt a little of booze and the winners for the last two years hadn’t bothered to engrave their names on it. That was in Bloemfontein in 2007.
I was there to watch the Springboks thrash England 58-10. In the week, a local journalist told me a story about how the Currie Cup trophy had kept disappearing. After a braai or a party at the union, someone would make off with the trophy, keeping it at their homes to show off to mates. Cue desperate phone calls around Bloem to find out who had taken it this time.
I stayed in the same hotel as the Boks. It was Allister Coetzee’s birthday during the week ahead of the Test and Jake White was buying drinks for him in the bar. The management team looked settled, happy and secure. A little tense, but at ease. The Bulls had just won the Vodacom Super 14 the Saturday before. There was confidence in the camp.
White and I spoke a fair amount that week. His relationship with Saru was tense at the time. Actually, it was tense all the time. Saru was, as it is now, a confused jumble of amateur administrators in a professional era. White had come through the horror show of 2006, a year in which the Boks had shipped 49 points to nil against the Wallabies. He survived an emergency meeting with the Saru board, one of whom arrived armed, as evidence of how bad White was doing, with player ratings cut out from the Rapport.
White survived, and this week nine years ago arrived back in South Africa as World Cup champion.
The president, Thabo Mbeki, who had fobbed off the threats by Butana Komphela (who was in the stands for the Currie Cup final this past weekend) to take away the Bok passports if they did not transform, sang the praises of Boks, and spoke of how the team and rugby needed to transform.
“I have no doubt about the commitment of the team to this,” said Mbeki. “We must put behind our backs the controversies about how representative our teams are and the way to ensure this is by ensuring we have the players. We need to build up sport and use this victory to accelerate the process of getting all our young people, black and white, involved in sport.
“One of the mistakes of government these last 13 years has been that we haven’t paid sufficient attention to the development of sport - we haven’t committed sufficient resources to it. Perhaps we have looked too exclusively at national teams, when we need to be building from below. We need to ascertain what’s happening in our schools, what’s the state of sports infrastructure in Soweto. Do the players have the facilities to train and prepare properly?”
The South African cabinet wanted White to stay on as coach, but the Saru hierarchy were having none of it.
“The president has expressed the view that Jake White should stay but cabinet’s view is that it’s an SA Rugby matter. Obviously they don’t have to take into account the views of the majority of South Africans, which in my view is Mr White should stay,” said Themba Maseko, head of communications.
“Efforts to make future teams representative will continue but what is primary in the minds of most South Africans is to celebrate this victory. White put together a winning team that made all South Africans proud. That should be the focus of our attention at this stage.”
Nine years later, and the Springbok coach felt forced to call for an indaba into South African rugby. Coetzee should have been given the job nine years ago. He may have been that rare breed - Bok coach that lasted more than four years, or one World Cup cycle.
He may have been able to have the power to force Saru to make the changes that Mbeki wanted nine years ago, to ensure that the structures were in place and maintained. He could have identified future Boks at Under-19 level, watched and nurtured their development. Could have, should have, but Saru cannot see further than a four-year plan.
They are talking about 2019, but that is short-sighted. They should be looking at the 2020 Olympics, the 2022 Commonwealth Games, and the 2023 and 2027 World Cups.
As Bryan Habana said after South Africa won the 2007 World Cup: “the politicians and administrators have one or two things in mind and I guess they want to build a team to reflect the rainbow nation. But as players we don’t exactly know what they intend.”
No-one seems to know what they intend.
The Star