By David O’Sullivan
The consensus around Allister Coetzee’s 23-man Springbok squad to face Ireland at Newlands on Saturday is that there are no real surprises. This is where rugby fans are like financial markets – they don’t like being blindsided. So far, there’s no mass selling of Bok shares.
But no Springbok team has ever been free of debate and argument around selection. Among the questions being asked: shouldn’t Elton Jantjies be the run-on flyhalf in the place of Pat Lambie, why is the most effective flanker in SA rugby at the moment, Jaco Kriel, not even on the bench, and why is Steven Kitshoff back home if you’re not going to play him?
The answers could be: Elton Jantjies has just recovered from a broken finger so Coetzee won’t want to risk him right away, and anyway Lambie is magnificent at number 10.
Francois Louw takes the blindside flanker position instead of Kriel. Louw, apart from having considerable Bok experience, also plays club rugby against many of the Irish players. His knowledge of the opposition will be invaluable.
The coach is spoilt for choice when it comes to big men for his front row. Not everyone gets to play and someone has to sit this one out. In this case, it’s Kitshoff. Maybe he gets a shot next week?
Then there’s the issue of transformation. No doubt Coetzee had a close eye on this potentially thorny issue. SARU has just managed to placate the ANC Youth League and get them to agree to call off protest action at the Test venues. They didn’t need that fragile truce to shatter within 24 hours.
The Springbok team needed to have enough black players to satisfy not only the politicians, but also SARU’s own transformation targets. Clearly Coetzee has met those requirements. Furthermore, he’s been able to pick black players who, on past performance alone, are deserving of a chance to prove themselves at Test level and should not be flippantly disregarded as “quota players” simply because of the colour of their skin.
Lionel Mapoe and Siya Kolisi have been outstanding in Super Rugby this year. Mapoe has had just two minutes of Test game time to prove his worth at this level, while Kolisi has come off the bench 13 times. If they’re to show their value as Test players, they need to be given a chance to play. And that means starting the game.
.@Springboks coach Allister Coetzee has named his side to face Ireland in Saturday's first test match at Newlands. pic.twitter.com/BoZtfpfoUM
— SuperSport (@SuperSportTV) June 9, 2016
Gone are the days when 15 white men could claim to represent a country as diverse as South Africa. If transformation is given a chance to be truly effective rather than be an exercise in window-dressing, Springbok rugby will arrive at a point where, like at the Blitzbokke, players are judged by their skill not by their race.
An interesting development in the buildup to the first Test has been the flurry of Springbok sponsorship announcements, which is good news for SA Rugby whose coffers which weren’t looking as full as they should be. The 11th hour deals that have been struck indicate a new trend in sports sponsorships – the heady days of long-term, lucrative deals are over.
SARU was still negotiating with key sponsors for the Springboks with less than a fortnight to go before the series against Ireland. The Bok kit was lacking a few corporate logos. Within a couple of days, two sponsors came on board. Blue Label Telecoms are the title sponsor for the three-Test Ireland series and will have their logo on the Bok jersey, while Bidvest will have their logo on the Bok shorts.
In November last year, within two days, the Springboks lost two of their big sponsors – ABSA and BMW. BMW said their decision was a commercial one as they refocused their sponsorship strategy. One of the reasons given by ABSA to end their association was the slow pace of transformation. That might well have been the case, but the issue of money would have loomed large.
In 2004, SASOL signed a deal to pay R25-million a year for six years to sponsor the Springboks, the Sevens, the “A” team and the U-20 team. When the deal came up for renewal SARU had upped the price substantially, demanding around R65m for the Springbok team alone for just one year. This was too much for the oil giant, and in stepped ABSA. The media speculated that ABSA might have paid up to R100m a year for the national team alone.
These big money days are over and the sports sponsorship bubble has finally burst. It was inevitable. In the current economic climate, corporates no longer have the appetite nor the finances to pay hundreds of millions of rand for a single sports teams in a saturated market with falling TV audiences.
SA Rugby’s strategy is to lure a sponsor with smaller, more affordable deals over shorter time periods. No longer is there an all-embracing six-year deal on the table. Sponsors simply don’t have that kind of money, but as Blue Label Telecoms has shown, there is value in a shorter sponsorship opportunity in which the amount being paid won’t break the budget.
