SA Rugby: Administration of subterfuge and oppression

Almost three years ago to the day, on June 8 2005, SA Rugby’s presidents’ council put in motion a unanimous council resolution — a transformation charter of sorts that was a groundbreaking plan to fast-track transformation and representativeness in rugby in South Africa.

It has been declared that the game of rugby is in peril in South Africa, as the playing profiles of 12 out of the 14 unions do not match the country’s demographic profile. South Africa has 466 000 registered rugby players and more than 200 000 are in the Southern and Eastern Cape.

This unanimous and binding council resolution was a watershed moment in rugby and embraced the entire country, with six Super 14 franchises (the Bulls, Lions, Stormers, Cheetahs, Sharks and Spears) representing all 14 unions. It also established fledgling new franchise the Southern Spears, who, given the newness of the franchise, were placed in the 2006 Currie Cup as preparation for the 2007/08 Super 14 competition.

A 90-page SA Rugby Super 14 franchise participation agreement was summarily authored by SA Rugby’s legal counsel, De Klerk & van Gend, and distributed by SA Rugby to all six franchises on November 28 2005. It declared that “notwithstanding signature of the agreement”, it was effective from January 1 2006 to May 31 2010, and articulated in great detail the equitable distribution of players as well as the relegation and promotion of the last-placed South African team on the Super 14 log.

Provision was made for an enormous amount of consultancy with the national coach and six Super 14 coaches, and the distribution and playing of Springboks.

Around February 2006, the Stormers, Cheetahs, Lions and Sharks were on losing streaks and feared being relegated. Brian van Rooyen was fighting for survival in rugby and Hoskins, as figurehead and president of the Sharks, was tabbed by the “big” five unions to oppose Van Rooyen and mandated that the Spears had to be incapacitated until after May 2010.

Following his election in March 2006, Hoskins’s first order was to declare the Spears “not ready” for Super 14, and so started a legal brouhaha that SA Rugby lost in the Cape High Court where Judge Dennis Davis ruled on August 4 2006 that the Spears had a legal and binding agreement. This wrangle has seen SA Rugby lose three times in the Cape High Court and spend more than R21-million to accomplish this — R8-million in legal fees and costs and a further R13,5-million to acquire 50% of the shares of Border, SWD and Eastern Province. The bizarre endeavour to vote the Spears “out” still is not over.

All this is being choreographed by SA Rugby’s inept legal and financial administrators at the urging of Hoskins, in a futile endeavour to fulfil his mandate to exclude the Spears.

SA Rugby under Hoskins has set back transformation and equitable representation in South African rugby by five years. The SA Rugby treasury has been pillaged in wild and uncontrolled efforts of ruse and subterfuge to demonise, marginalise and eradicate the Spears, but one has to ask: How responsible is it, for SA Rugby, as custodians of the game in this country, to deny deliberately and wantonly more than 200 000 rugby players in the Eastern Cape the opportunity of playing for their own franchise? To put this into further perspective, the Lions franchise represents only 21 clubs and the Spears franchise 450.

SA Rugby under Hoskins has seen the serial violation of its own constitution and an unprecedented haemorrhaging of cash and personnel, leading rugby in this country to the brink of a cataclysmic meltdown.

A claim for relief, lodged in March 2008, now sits before the Competition Tribunal for the Spears to receive R10-million per year for each of the three years that SA Rugby breached agreements, violated its own constitution with impunity and oppressed the rugby community in the Eastern Cape.

A further ruse trumpeted by Hoskins in March 2006, just before he helicoptered out from Port Elizabeth airport to Alicedale, was that in place of a Super 14 franchise, given that the Spears were “not ready”, he had engineered the establishment of a rugby academy for the Eastern Cape, at a cost of R30-million (to be paid by SuperSport) and to be built in Alicedale, opening in January 2008.

Fast forward to November 2007 last year and Hoskins; his CFO, Basil Haddad, and his MD, Stones, realise that SA Rugby is R10-million in the red — financial results that will scupper any chance of re-election. They promptly sign, without reading the agreement or canvassing the 14 unions, a 2011-2015 SuperSport TV deal, to take delivery of an advance of R30-million.

In a sleight of hand, faster than you could say Mike Stofile, the R30-million drops on to the SA Rugby bottom line. The rugby academy earmarked for the Eastern Cape is forgotten, as are the 200 000 players there, so that Hoskins can announce a R20-million profit.

But wait. There’s more. On Friday May 30 at 12.46pm, Hoskins and his erstwhile MD, Stones, issue a statement, pumped out to SA Rugby’s media list, declaring: “The first practical step towards the Eastern Cape unions becoming part of the Vodacom Super 14 will be taken on Saturday when a combined Border and Eastern Province team meet Vodacom Western Province in a friendly match in East London. The two neighbours have come together with the backing of SA Rugby as part of a carefully mapped-out plan to prepare themselves for Super Rugby involvement at the turn of the decade.”

Practical step? Carefully mapped-out plan? Turn of the decade?

Firstly, this is an ill-conceived attempt at hastily staging the pretense of Super rugby for the benefit of the Eastern Cape, in advance of SA Rugby and Hoskins’s interrogation before the parliamentary portfolio committee of sport on June 10. This date will be one of monumental importance, where SA Rugby will be presented with ultimatums.

Secondly, SA Rugby has no strategic marketing or Super 14 franchise plan itself, let alone any “carefully mapped-out plan”. If such a plan exists it should have been tabled three years ago.

Thirdly, “turn of the decade” means quite simply when the existing Sanzar Super 14 franchise ends on May 31 2010. A tidy little fact that mirrors the existing agreement.

Looking into the future, the most significant watershed moment in rugby in South Africa will come on June 10 in Parliament in Cape Town, when SA Rugby under Hoskins will be ventilated for all to see and hear.