How the Big Indaba Can Save SA Rugby From Itself

These are tough times for South African rugby, and they call for tough measures. But will this week’s coaching indaba make all the difference, or will it turn out to be much indaba about nothing? Let’s weighs up the odds

You know that feeling when you head into yet another meeting on a project that has gone off the rails, knowing it is unlikely to make any difference because you do not have the right people in the room?

Or how about those meetings that generate no action points? Or action points with no one appointed to achieve said goal, and no time frame set?

Meetings for the sake of meetings, I like to call them. Yes, it looks like you are doing something, but in effect, all you are doing is wasting everyone’s time. Hell’s Bells, but they irritate me.

A bit like the two-day national coaches’ indaba SA Rugby are hosting this week? Perhaps harsh, but there are so many things wrong with rugby in SA at the moment, that it’s hard to know where to start the repair.

The mass player and coach exodus owing to the exchange rate, transformation imperatives and boardroom battles have all contributed to the current malaise. And as the man tasked with leading the indaba, Brendan Venter, says: “Our decline has been devastating to witness and there is no quick fix for the problem.”

So why start with the game plan? Yes the Boks are miles behind everybody else as far as attacking play is concerned, and the defence is unorganised, but can those be changed in the current infrastructure?

Without a clearly defined and communicated transformation plan, that includes funded ground up implementation, and with very public support, the game will continue to second guess itself.

We also need radical change to the administrative structures. What we currently have is a bloated amateur infrastructure trying to run a professional game.

But with bigger fish to fry, and cheap political points to be scored, it’s difficult to see any immediate change from government. And given that the SARU governing structures can only be changed via a constitution that requires the structure to vote for its own demise, I am not sure we can expect anything significant on that front for some time.

It would be easy to roll over and play dead. Just imagine how frustrating it must be for good people in the sport who just want to see Springbok rugby prosper again?

The indaba is unlikely to deliver anything not said 10 years ago, and while we might not have all the right people in the room, and thus deliver action points that cannot be acted on, it is a start.

Were I in the room, I would not be wasting time trying to change the things that cannot be changed by the people attending. Instead, I would look for discussions and answers on things that can be controlled.

Issues such as replacing director of rugby Rassie Erasmus and defence coach Jacques Nienaber, how best to utilise Rassie’s mobi-unit as part of the Bok coaching structure, defining our selection policy and coaching KPIs, improving general player skills and conditioning, getting schoolboys to play to entertain rather than just win, and how we contract youngsters coming out of school.

In the workplace, these meetings for the sake of meetings generally take place when there is a lack of leadership, leaving employees to meander, rather than working toward a tightly defined goal.

Since chasing former president Oregan Hoskins out of town, at a time that sees the Boks going through one of their darkest patches ever, there has been silence from SARU. A real vacuum in leadership, when leadership is exactly what the sport is crying out for.

This is when a business either starts losing key staff as it nosedives toward its inevitable demise, or those who care enough get together to try and right the listing ship, perhaps even starting with a meeting for the sake of a meeting.

“If the Springboks are content with being a mid-table team,” says Venter, “They will continue in the current vein. However, if they are serious about improving all aspects of their play, they will aim to do things differently going forward.”

Here’s hoping the coaching indaba this week is the start of doing something differently in SA Rugby, perhaps even inspiring a few indabas at businesses in need of a shakeup.

• This article first appeared on the Change Exchange, an online platform by BrightRock, provider of the first-ever life insurance that changes as your life changes. The opinions expressed in this piece are the writer’s own and don’t necessarily reflect the views of BrightRock.