Publications
Partners
A couple of weeks ago, there was a report that SA Rugby director of rugby Rassie Erasmus was in talks with the Rugby Football Union (RFU) to be England head coach.
The story was elegantly denied when, on the very same day it was published, Erasmus marked his social media bow on Twitter by releasing a fly-on-the-wall video of him speaking to the Springboks before last year’s World Cup final against England.
The accompanying remark to the video was that he wouldn’t know how to speak with another nation’s team the same way he could with the Boks.
Long story short, the implication was that he wasn’t going anywhere.
With the advent of social media having somehow succeeded in relegating traditional media to liars second only to politicians, it was assumed that the story was fake news.
Knowing the integrity of the journalist who wrote the story, and the credibility of his sources, there is more to this than meets the eye.
While the RFU’s offer would have been tempting on the financial front alone (current England coach Eddie Jones is rumoured to earn R1.5 million a month), there are a lot of reasons that could entice Erasmus to accept it.
To be sure, Erasmus’ actions since winning the World Cup – promoting defence coach Jacques Nienaber to head coach, and bringing in Deon Davids and Daan Human after Matt Proudfoot’s departure – have dropped broad hints as to his wanting to continue to see out that unprecedented six-year contract we all complained bitterly about.
But behind the scenes machinations at SA Rugby could tempt him to leave his job sooner.
The first is the status of SA Rugby chief executive Jurie Roux’s contract.
While the organisation is understood to be happy to extend it, the spectre of the outcome of his ongoing arbitration hearing with the University of Stellenbosch, which has accused him and a former colleague of misappropriating R37 million of its funds, looms large.
Roux may be a divisive figure in South African rugby circles, but he’s popular at World Rugby, where former Argentina scrum half Agustín Pichot, in his push to be that body’s chairperson, is said to be keen to have the South African replace Brett Gosper as chief executive.
Should Roux, who has never had an easy relationship with his constituents, decide to leave, Erasmus would follow suit.
The basic reason is that a massive part of Erasmus’ astonishing success in his first two years in charge can be traced back to Roux running interference for him in terms of the organisational politics so the coach could focus on the rugby.
Not having that kind of protection would encourage Erasmus to consider his options.
Another reason Erasmus may not stay is the news that some of the unions want to move back to the archaic structure of having the Presidents’ Council run SA Rugby.
With the Springboks having won the World Cup, the upcoming deputy president’s elections in April could well be christened as the gravy train elections.
Giving back power to the presidents – most of whom tend to be former traffic cops, former teachers and so on, as opposed to businesspeople – would be lurching back to the bad old days when the brandewijn and Coke brigade made all sorts of important rugby decisions using a voting system tilted heavily in favour of small provinces that have done little or nothing for SA Rugby.
By the looks of it, Erasmus is still keen to see out his ultimate mission, which is to make South African rugby a consistent, as opposed to sporadic, powerhouse in world rugby.
But the environment in which he hopes to achieve that is key.
- Follow me on Twitter @simxabanisa
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Get in touchCity Press | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Rise above the clutter | Choose your news | City Press in your inbox | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City Press is an agenda-setting South African news brand that publishes across platforms. Its flagship print edition is distributed on a Sunday. |
