Offshore exodus goes on: Heyneke Meyer to coach Leicester Tigers

Dan Carter is to play with five South Africans (Percy Montgomery, Philip Burger, Gerrie Britz, Steve Meyer and Gavin Hume) at Perginan at the end of the year.

Now, Leicester Tigers, one of Europe’s heavy weights in rugby, have announced former Bulls head coach Heyneke Meyer to lead them into battle next year.

And so the exodus of South African rugby players and coaches continues.

The Daily Mail reports today that the decision to contract Meyer will be announced next week.

All of this comes about after Leicester sacked Argentine coach Marcelo Loffreda three weeks ago.

For the past three weeks Leicester have conducted a world wide search featuring six coaches from different countries — Wayne Smith (New Zealand), Jake White (South Africa), Eddie O’Sullivan (Ireland), Ewen McKenzie (Australia), David Young (Wales) and Fabien Galthie (France).

Now Heyneke will whip out the Leicester Tigers check book and get those Blue Bulls to sign up and come play for him.

What will it take to stop this haemoraging of South African rugby assets?

NZRU boss STEVE TEW sat down with Sunday News’ DAVID LONG last week to talk Tana, competition reviews and the Players Collective Agreement.
Tew discusses player drain that’s become a torrent
Q & A

Sunday News | Sunday, 29 June 2008

Sunday News: Is it disappointing that Tana Umaga, a former All Blacks captain, is one of the main figures in taking top players out of New Zealand?

Steve Tew: I don’t think Tana has made much difference. The driver of the attraction to Toulon is the amount of money the club president is prepared to put on the table to build himself a side. Our view is the French player market is totally out of control and it’s an issue for all of world rugby, not just us.

SN: You do hear players like Jerry Collins say that one reason for moving to Toulon is the attraction of working with Umaga though.

ST: You could argue the same about Vern Cotter being at Clermont, John Kirwan being in Japan or any number of good coaches. That’s one of the critical issues and that’s why we’re committed to ensuring we have the best coaches in this country. One of the things a player will look at when he’s deciding where to go is the coach. The coach is a very important part of creating the environment.

SN: Are we getting to the point where clubs in Europe have reached their limit regarding overseas players and it will be harder for more New Zealand players to pick up overseas contracts?

ST: I’m loath to predict any flattening out of the player market. I’ve been watching this since 1996 and we’ve constantly heard that it must, at some stage, correct itself and it never has fully. We’re really aware that there are a whole lot of people out there, particularly in Europe, acting as agents who are driving these deals by going to clubs and saying “if I can get you so and so player, would you be interested?” Then they go to the player and make these deals happen. So we are very concerned that the player market in France is out of control.

SN: The NZRU are reviewing the provincial and Sanzar competitions. With so much up in the air, is it tough for the provinces to sign players when they don’t know what the competitions will look like?

ST: We contract the players at franchise level and one of the debates is: does the contracting model stay the way it is? Some provincial unions have found it challenging around contracting and commercial arrangements, which is one of the reasons we’ve stuck to the September deadline, because we really need to give some surety on what’s going to happen. It’s no different to any other business that’s going through the process of adaption, change or reform.There’s always some places where there’s a bit more doubt than others. Personally, I think it’s the review work that’s most challenging now.

SN: The big unions seem to want fewer teams in the top flight next season, but the smaller want to remain. There are going to be some upset people aren’t there?

ST: There were 14 meetings and 13 submissions and inside that there was a range of ideas, from the competition being small and teams playing each other often, to big and playing each other once. Somewhere in there the answer lies.

SN: It has been speculated that there could be changes to the Super 14 and Tri-nations as early as next year. Is this likely?

ST: Personally, I think change in 2009 is less likely because it’s not very far away and there are always complications around changing a competition, not least the commercial programmes that are in place, venues and our relationship with cricket needs to be taken into account. It’s not impossible though. There’s some talk we might make adjustments for 2009. It’s much more likely that it will be 2010 and beyond but nothing has been decided either way.

SN: What about the Super 14 having a six-team playoff next year? Can that happen?

ST: That’s one of the things up for discussion, but there’s a Lions tour to South Africa next year, so there’s no way the South Africans want the competition to go any longer than the start of the Lions tour. So that’s a very firm peg in the ground. We are very firm on the competition not starting any earlier than it does now and our view is that going forward we want it to start later. It’s not a shared view across Sanzar. It’s one of the things we’ve got to work through because we’re a joint venture and we’ve got to find an appropriate compromise. We all agree the intensity of competition in the Super 14 would suggest we should have an enlarged, longer, more commercially productive finals series. But as long as you’ve got 14 teams playing each other and you can’t start the season any earlier and you have to finish when you finish, it’s hard to do this in the short term.

SN: The Players Collective Agreement runs out at the end of this year. Have discussions about a new one taken place yet?

ST: The collective negotiation does expire at the end of 2008. By law, we can’t enter negotiations until October if initiated by the players or November if initiated by us that’s part of the employment law in this country. The reality is an awful lot of what we cover in the reviews is subject to agreement with the players. The review work is going to be a part of the collective negotiation and we’ve got the Players Association heavily involved in every phase of these discussions.

SN: There were heated discussions about the last Players Collective Agreement, do you expect it to be smoother this time around?

ST: Last time we went through a significant change in the way we contracted and related to our players. We’ve worked really hard, as they have, on the relationship between the employee and employer. We’re very fortunate in that we’ve got some leading players that are extremely conscientious of how important this relationship is and the environment we create for players. I wouldn’t say the last negotiation was heated, it was long and there were moments of tension as there always are with any industrial relationship. We’ve got some pretty fundamental work being done on competitions and franchise structures, so it’s hard to predict what the flow on will be to our employment environment.

SN: Is the current agreement working?

ST: Yes, but like everything, there’s things you’d improve if you had a chance. No doubt both parties have things they’d like to discuss. The player market is very hot internationally and we’ve also seen our player costs go past the point where we can avoid them.