SARU's four-city fiefdom is following Welsh path to ruin: Tommy Bedford

Former Springbok captain Tommy Bedford writes from London in response to Rory Steyn's piece on the death of Transvaal club rugby, arguing the rot runs far deeper and wider. Bedford traces today's crisis to SARU's decision years ago to funnel resources and Springbok selection almost entirely through four "City" Unions — Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria and Johannesburg — while starving the remaining ten or eleven provinces. Drawing on his own playing days with Natal and Durban Collegians, he shows how storied clubs and schools that once fed provincial rugby have withered, and warns SA Rugby is repeating the mistake that gutted Welsh club rugby..By Tommy Bedford*.Being here in London, I've come to rely on BizNews's expanded and varied content from a number of quarters these days to stay in touch with South Africa.So it was welcome to see Rory Steyn's commentary on the death of Transvaal club rugby, prompted by the empty seats at Ellis Park and the collapse of the corporate hospitality business — a direct result of SARU's pricing demands for the Springboks vs England Test.I've been forecasting the decline of club rugby for years, and Platteland is now living proof of it. When the Free State Cheetahs and Eastern Province Kings were dropped from the old Pro14 — with no promotion or relegation on offer — to make way for the expanded competition, the writing was on the wall. It was done to accommodate the Cape Stormers, KZN Sharks, Northerns Blue Bulls and Transvaal’s Lions. And perhaps because the rest of the Southern Hemisphere (New Zealand, Australia, Argentina) no longer wanted South Africa in their competitions. I took this up directly with the President of SARU.The country then, as now, has naturally and overwhelmingly embraced the winning Springbok rugby of today. But the Springbok team was then, as now, chosen from players playing only overseas and from only four of SARU’s Provincial Unions — the four “City” Unions, as the SARU President called them: Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria and Joburg.My argument was: how could this be when the country and SARU have 14 or 15 Provincial Unions, all treated differently? At the time, the four City Unions received roughly R40 million each from SARU. The next three — Cheetahs, Pumas and Kings — got roughly R21 million each. And the remaining seven or eight got R11 million each.So you are putting 11 of your Unions at a severe disadvantage compared to the four City Unions. It meant that leading rugby schools like Grey College in Bloemfontein and Grey High in Port Elizabeth — Kolisi’s school — would stop feeding their own Unions with players, as they would effortlessly be snaffled by the four City Unions.The system that has evolved is entirely unbalanced, with no meaningful, viable competition left in SA — unlike what the Currie Cup once properly provided. Instead, it was all biased to serve only four of the 14 or 15 Unions, with the Springbok side now effectively a fiefdom of players based mostly overseas.How can a SARU that has zero interest in 11 of its Unions — and just as little interest in their clubs — be trusted with the game’s future? Steyn pointed to two defunct Transvaal clubs, but I could point to the mirror in KZN: Durban High School Old Boys and Glenwood High School Old Boys, powerhouse clubs in my day — Glenwood was coached by Kitch Christie before he took charge of the victorious 1995 World Cup Springboks — are no longer in existence.And unless you are now a rugby player based in Durban, you haven’t got a hope in hell of ever playing for the Sharks, yet the Natal Rugby XV, under its legendary coach Izak van Heerden, boasted players from Empangeni, Ladysmith, Kokstad, Pietermaritzburg and Durban.I speak from experience. In 1962, that team lost only one match. In 1963, it lost none. Durban Collegians, who provided the bulk of the team, then fielded five senior and two under-20 teams. Today, I believe, the club has just two.I have written because Rory should pursue this seriously unbalanced situation into which SA Rugby has morphed, where the country’s elite are catered for, but the rest are forgotten..Read more:.SA Rugby is technically insolvent – and still the healthiest bankrupt union in world rugby.The base is being eroded — something that has not happened in England or France, but has happened in Wales, where club rugby was similarly sacrificed to supposedly build an unstoppable national side. Welsh club rugby is finished today. As bankrupt as South African rugby now mostly seems to be, it is doing the very same thing to its own heartlands..*Tommy Bedford (Thomas Pleydell Bedford), born 8 February 1942 in Bloemfontein, was a Springbok flank/No. 8 who won 25 caps and captained South Africa three times. He was educated at Christian Brothers College in Kimberley and the University of Natal, Durban, where he studied architecture and captained the university side, before earning a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford in 1965 — an experience that shaped his outspoken opposition to apartheid, particularly in rugby..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

SARU's four-city fiefdom is following Welsh path to ruin: Tommy Bedford

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