Lucky Maree
ON THE BALL: Sooner or later somebody will have to sort out the money problems, warns Lucky Maree
One must assume that when Francois Pienaar and Sean Fitzpatrick forced world rugby into the professional era in 1995, they were thinking of the old saying, “if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing for money”.
One must also assume they were not thinking of the modern version of that saying that goes, “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing to death”.
After about 150 years, Wasps is about to fizzle out into bankruptcy and death.
Robert Kitson, rugby correspondent for the Guardian, speaks of “English rugby’s days of reckoning,” and calls it, “the oceans of bullshit, the overflowing reservoirs of self interest.”
Wasps Rugby Club was started in 1867. That’s the same year the South African diamond fields were discovered and the last year criminals were shipped to far-away Australia and that’s a long time ago.
Give or take a few million, Wasps Rugby is in the hole to the tune of £35 million and that’s about R720 million! And guess what? They don’t have the money.
On home soil, Western Province Rugby Union is still standing after two years of desperate negotiations, but only just.
Coach John Dobson has said since late 2019, he’s had eight bosses.
“I also reported to the board chairperson, Jan van der Merwe, and later to Ebrahim Rasool, and above that I also had to deal with the president, Zelt Marais,” he told Daily Maverick in February.
In the same article, Dobson is described as the man in the middle, “wearing the official cap of coach, but operating as a de facto director of rugby, chief operating officer and commercial director”.
Province may be playing great rugby, but the club is not out of the woods.
And clubs all over the world are all in the same boat. Somebody, somewhere, will have to fix this, but applying a Band-Aid is not going to cut it.
Of course nobody looks to World Rugby for solutions.
Time and again, they have proven themselves to be unimaginative, clumsy and dictatorial. They have not come up with one creative decisions about the very serious (if not deadly) issues of injuries, the evil card system, and placing referees in situations that no normal human being can handle. And that’s just on the field! Instead they believe in the old saying, that “if you ignore a problem long enough it will go away like a bad smell”.
Well, this time it won’t.
The day will come when international television companies pull the rug out under rugby and that will be a black day. It will be a pity if we have to go back to driving down to the sports club on a Tuesday night to have a beer and a boerie roll and watch Diggers play Benoni Panne Rugby Club.
On the other hand, maybe pressing the on/off button and starting all over again won’t be such a bad thing.
Pictured above: John Dobson, coach and behind the scenes miracle worker at the Stormers.
Soure: Planet Rugby.
