Side Entry: Leaner, meaner Gold Cup returns

Rustenburg Impala winger Dumisani Matyeshana told a story this week that went a long way towards explaining how club rugby sides can leave an indelible mark on one family, let alone the communities from which they come.

Speaking at the sponsorship unveiling-cum-launch of the Gold Cup, which is now in its sixth season, during SuperSport’s popular Xhosa rugby magazine show Phaka, Matyeshana relayed just how vested his family has been over the years in the Mdantsane-based club side Swallows.

“My father and his brothers played for the club; my brothers and I played for the club; my mother was the club secretary at one stage; my father’s sister was the treasurer; and now my elder brother is the club president.

“When we were boys, we always knew that, the day before a match, we’d sleep in the garage because the club players came to sleep over at our house. We didn’t mind it one bit because it gave us a chance to get up close with our heroes and we’d quickly nominate the players whose boots we would polish,” Matyeshana said.

Looking at the 16 clubs that will contest this year’s Gold Cup – which began yesterday and will conclude with the final on April 13 – they probably all have a Matyeshana family immersed in helping run them from whatever region they come from in the country.

This is why the powers that be have pressed on with the popular national club competition – to bring ownership back to the communities from which the clubs come and to make club rugby one of the main pathways to making the so-called big time in South African rugby.

To that end, the competition has picked up three new partners – SSG Holdings is the name sponsor, and Blu Approved and Money4Jam are the other allies in rugby’s bid to pull club rugby back from what can come across as a ginger stepchild status in the game.

What should be encouraging for club players and club fans alike is the fact that a familiar face in the form of former Springbok captain John Smit is the acting chief executive of SSG, which, by default, makes the 2007 World Cup-winning skipper the face of club rugby in the country.

In some ways, Smit’s newfound status as the craggy face of club rugby is fitting because he began playing the game when boys still had to play club rugby as a form of finishing school in the same way novice boxers have to face a grizzled journeyman to iron out their flaws, unlike the current situation we see with youngsters going straight from schools into academies and first-class rugby.

While club rugby, thanks to the well-documented funding struggles it has had and the feeling that the new generation of sports fan has more varied interests, may seem a hard sell, there are some incredible numbers reported from some centres around the country, like 13 000 – the number of fans who crammed into the Bridgton Sports Grounds in Oudtshoorn to watch Bridgton play Progress last year.

On the playing front, former Sharks fly half Garth April – who was instrumental Durbanville-Bellville winning the Gold Cup in 2015 – is still held up as an example of what is possible for players left behind by the professional system, or indeed the fork lifters and security guards looking to cap off their Sunday league efforts with a miracle.

An unintended bit of spice to this year’s 32-match tournament could well be how many players who were professionals just last year turn up at club level due to the contractual offloading a lot of the rugby unions underwent late last year because of budget constraints.

And, for teams like Swallows, who have many of the players who played for the Border Bulldogs last year until that union’s financial problems led to its suspension and no professional rugby as a result this year, they suddenly find themselves carrying the province’s hopes in terms of rugby.

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