By Lucky Vince Pienaar
According to official sources, the South African Rugby Union is “taking steps” to get the Blitzboks back on the winning track ahead of the Olympics.
Sevens high-performance manager Marius Schoeman and SARU general manager of rugby, Charles Wessels, reportedly met last week to discuss the team’s options.
This has been prompted, apparently, because of the failure of the team at the Vancouver and Los Angeles HSBC tournaments.
It’s about time, Schoeman and Wessels.
Have you not seen the steady decline of the Blitzboks that can be traced back to the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2021? That’s when the Blitzboks threw away the chance of at least a bronze medal when they lost to a five-man Argentinian side.
There have been too many red-light events to mention that have seen the Blitzboks drop down the rankings and out of automatic qualification for the Olympics. They followed this with a loss to Kenya in the Africa conference and are now facing the tough prospect of winning in Monte Carlo to get in the back door of the Olympics.
And what is SARU’s master plan?
They want to fire coach Sandile Ngcobo (or as they put it, look for another position for him within the structures) and promote Philip Snyman to head coach.
If not before, they should have seen the writing on the wall in December last year in Dubai. Ngcobo missed the tournament and Snyman guided the Blitzboks to a convincing tournament win, beating the red-hot Argentinians in the final.
Wasn’t it beautiful to see Snyman on the field at halftime, being a real presence in the team? “First-time tackles! We give them nothing!” he said.
A week later in Cape Town, Ngcobo was back and the Blitzboks got drilled by the All Blacks (7-31) and finished fifth.
Besides South Africa losing to Samoa to finish 11th in Los Angeles, it was ominous that Ricky Duarttee was not playing due to unexplained “personal reasons”. We can only wonder what those reasons might be.
And what about the role that Rassie Erasmus played, or didn’t play, as director of rugby? Why did he never step in? Surely he would have seen what was happening.
The window of opportunity to see South Africa at the Olympics in Paris in July has been steadily closing (without any intervention), but it can still happen.
It seems obvious that Philip Snyman is the man for the job, but it’s not enough. It needs the support of somebody with the brilliance of a Rassie Erasmus to pull this one off.
Pictured above: Phillip Snyman.
Image source: X
