It might be the toughest job in sport. Springbok rugby coach. Just how ready is Rassie Erasmus to take on the challenge, and what can he learn about persistence, stamina, and endurance from an Indian environmental hero by the name of Jadav Payeng?
Have you ever heard of Jadav Payeng? No, he’s not a rugby player. He’s an ordinary, unassuming man from Jorhat in India, who at the age of 16 started doing something extraordinary.
He planted 20 bamboo seedlings on the treeless sandbank of a river island that had lost more than half of its landmass due to erosion. Then he planted more trees, and more trees, until he had built an entire forest with his own hands.
Today, almost 40 years later, the Molai forest is six square kilometres in size. It teems with wildlife, including tigers, elephants and deer. How do you build a forest? Slowly. One seed, one tree, at a time.
Rassie Erasmus could learn a thing or two about patience, stamina, and endurance from Jadav Payeng. Handed an unprecedented 6-year stint as the new Spirngbok rugby coach, Erasmus not only has to pick up the pieces left by Allister Coetzee, but also implement a long term strategy as the new Director of Rugby, that will aim to prevent us seeing a repeat of the torturous last two years.
Whether he should be doing both jobs is up for debate, but the fact that none of our Super Rugby or PRO14 coaches are an automatic shoe-in for the Bok job ends the debate right here.
So for SA Rugby, given their disregard for former coach Jake White, who offered his services for free, it was probably about choosing between a foreign coach, appointed into a clearly broken system, or going out on a limb and asking a man they clearly trust to fix not only the system, but also the national side.
Erasmus does have experience of being a director of rugby in the SA rugby landscape. Called the Senior Professional Coach at the time, Director of Rugby was effectively his role at Western Province in 2008.
While in that role, he set about introducing systems that saw the age-group and other levels of rugby in the Western Cape benefit the senior provincial team. He also prioritised succession planning while turning on field weaknesses at the time, such as defence and forward play, into strengths.
Now he gets a chance to do the same at a national level. No pressure.
His coaching credentials cannot be questioned. Erasmus snapped a 29-year drought in Bloemfontein by delivering three consecutive Currie Cup titles between 2005 and 2007, the Stormers were 50 percent more successful under Erasmus between 2008 and 2011 than they had been over the previous four seasons, and most recently he rallied Munster to reach the PRO12 final and the final four of the European Champions Cup.
I have no doubt that he will improve Springbok performance (well, it would be pretty tricky to do worse), but it’s his work as the Director of Rugby that is more important to the game in South Africa. A role that will have to see him not only appoint a Springbok coach under him at some stage, but also implement substantial change.
Instead of continuity, there’s been a completely new approach with every change in coach. In effect, three steps forward and two steps back, which makes it difficult for South African rugby to progress.
Staying ahead of the wave is hard in any field of competition, be it commercial, cultural or sporting. The key is making the change before failure forces it upon the organisation.
That is why Erasmus needs to be fully focused on his role as SA Rugby’s Director of Rugby, and why he’s going to need as much persistence, stamina, and endurance s the man who built a forest.
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