Boom or Bust: Part III — A close-up of 10 Bok players in the 2008 Super 14

Take a sample group of 10 Springbok players, playing in the 2008 Super 14; just because they are household names because of their visibility and profile in the media, you think you have a handle on this game of rugby and know what is going on. Then try to focus on these famous 10 and ask yourself: Are we spectators to this corrosive attrition of our players?

Let’s then make the sample group of 10 elite players across four provinces — Western Province/Stormers, Bulls, Cheetahs/FS Cheetahs and the Sharks — and look at the statistics regarding their “contacts” during game time:

1. Burger, Schalk
2. de Villiers, Jean
3. Botha, Bakkies
4. Habana, Bryan
5. Spies, Pierre
6. Smith, Juan
7. Van der Linde, CJ
8. Pienaar, Ruan
9. Pietersen, JP
10. Steyn, Francois

Then, because you are a bit (actually, quite a bit) of an armchair specialist, with powerful and passionate opinions on the game of rugby and how it should be played and administered in South Africa, you start to wonder: How long have these guys “played” in the Super 14 this year, quite apart from all the consecutive Tests against Wales, Italy, Argentina, New Zealand and Australia, and what did they do during these 10 games and 12 hours of relentless game time? Obviously, other than entertaining you and a million other viewers.

I mention this, as we already face the crossroads of some soul searching on the “price” of “pay for play” versus “pay for performance“.

The money factor will make your eyes water, but before that happens, your head will spin from what is physically required and what is delivered by contracted South African rugby players. It helps to understand this sample group of 10 players first.

And bear in mind that when you mention contracted players, before you can say “professional”, or “standard player’s agreement”, out of the shadows looms the South African Players Association: agents, representatives of the legal kind, spokespersons and myriad extras to blur your vision and confuse you even further.

Step back for a minute and understand that the South African Rugby Employers’ Association (Sareo) wants to establish an across-the-board, singular, three-in-one player’s contract for all players.

How this would work is that the player is contracted by his province and/or club (1), then his franchise (2) and then the national team (3), with the intent that all use one agreement, instead of three. This hasn’t happened yet, but that is another story for Sareo to relate.

So on to the issue or topic of burnout or approaching the big bang among players in their rugby careers.

Quite apart from the training and the endless matches for just a small pool of 150 elite players out of 500 000 registered players in South Africa, it is inconceivable that we have but 150 elite players or even 450 players. We don’t.

If that is the belief, then we are thinking like Tonga, Fiji or Samoa instead of the powerhouse of global rugby that South Africa is — only it is dormant and has yet to be unlocked.

We most certainly have an elite player pool of 4 500 South African rugby players that could stand 10 deep behind each and every position of the 450 players to whom we are exposed.

The fact is that we have more elite players in South Africa than anywhere else in the world, but we have too few tournaments to include these players. As a consequence, outstanding talent are never seen or heard of after their high-school days.

It is possible that the bulk of the so-called “elite” players are there by virtue of them having little or no other career option than to be a professional rugby player for a few years. What of the talent with significant intellectual capital that go on to university or tertiary educational institutions, or merely seek out careers, before being offered a contract to play rugby?

This is why we get players with zero life skills or even secondary or tertiary education, and they have to cling to every game they play to maximise their earning potential from “match fees” — and, of course, you start to see the emergence of delinquent behaviour and violence.

Thankfully the physical prowess of a professional rugby player on the field can now be measured through sophisticated video analysis that determines the number of minutes played and various identifiable actions on the field. But, at no time are injuries measured; they are merely reported on, so there is no correlation of this data.

The physical categories of play being measured are:

1. Tackled
2. Tackles/missed applied
3. Ball carries
4. Passing/offloads
5. Rucks attack
6. Rucks defence
7. Kicking
8. Goal/drop kicks
9. LO jumps
10. LO contesting
11. Scrums own ball
12. Scrums opposition ball
13. Mauls own ball
14. Mauls opposition ball

Start with the amount of game time, in total minutes, across the Super 14 this year in 2008 and note that the below “TEN” players were on the field in high-impact, high-level Test rugby conditions over 10 weeks from a low end of four-and-a-half hours to 12 hours. An extraordinary amount of game time and impact to the body — mainly legs, groin, shoulder, arms and neck.

Player’s total times (min)
Burger, S: 530
De Villiers, J: 720
Botha, B: 500
Habana, B: 548
Spies, P: 320
Smith, J: 271
Van der Linde, CJ: 259
Pienaar, R: 331
Pietersen, JP: 585
Steyn, F: 720

The exceptional top-end-to-low-end range of these contact statistics for each category is staggering.

1. Tackled
Francois Steyn: 67
CJ van der Linde + Bakkies Botha: 10

2. Tackles/missed applied
Jean de Villiers: 107
CJ van der Linde: 27

3. Ball carries
Francois Steyn: 73
CJ van der Linde: 11

4. Passing/offloads
Ruan Pienaar: 173
CJ van der Linde: 9

5. Rucks attack
Schalk Burger: 116
Ruan Pienaar: 18

6. Rucks defence
Bakkies Botha: 60
Ruan Pienaar: 6

7. Kicking
Ruan Pienaar: 66
Bryan Habana + CJ van der Linde: 0

8. Goal/drop kicks
Francois Steyn: 25

9. LO jumps
Bakkies Botha: 29

10. LO contesting
Pierre Spies: 13

11. Scrums own ball
Schalk Burger: 84

12. Scrums opposition ball
Schalk Burger: 93

13. Mauls own ball
Bakkies Botha: 44

14. Mauls opposition ball
Schalk Burger + Bakkies Botha: 16

With the abundance of rugby talent in South Africa, it is unnecessary to place so much emphasis and pressure on an individual every game week in and week out. Resting, rotation and induction of talented players into the elite squads is a prerequisite, so the best players can be optimised in selected games, not every game.

With the influx and recognition of talent for elite squads, less big money can be paid to a few individuals and more money can be paid to a greater number of players, putting less of a financial burden on the unions, franchises and SA Rugby.

Which is why salary caps and floors and player rotation work.

Just ask the Kiwis that have won the Tri-Nations!

They use it, even though they are crying that some of their best players are leaving for the northern hemisphere.

It is a fact and they have gotten over it, and their results speak for themselves.

Australian Research Study:

Dr Bathgate, Eastern Suburbs Sports Medicine Centre, Sydney 2002, Australia;

Accepted 22 October 2001

Objectives: To assess injury patterns and incidence in the Australian Wallabies rugby union players from 1994 to 2000. To compare these patterns and rates with those seen at other levels of play, and to see how they have changed since the beginning of the professional era.

Methods: Prospective data were recorded from 1994 to 2000. All injuries to Australian Wallabies rugby union players were recorded by the team doctor. An injury was defined as one that forced a player to either leave the field or miss a subsequent game.

Results: A total of 143 injuries were recorded from 91 matches. The overall injury rate was 6.9/100 player hours of game play. The injury rates in the periods before (1994–1995) and after (1996–2000) the start of the professional era were 4.7/100 player hours and 7.4/100 player hours respectively.
The lock was the most injured forward, and the number 10 the most injured back.
Most injuries were soft tissue, closed injuries (55%), with the head being the most commonly injured region (25.1%). The phase of play responsible for most injuries was the tackle (58.7%).
Injuries were more likely to occur in the second half of the game, specifically the third quarter (40%). The vast majority of injuries were acute (90%), with the remainder being either chronic or recurrent.

Conclusions: Injury rate increases at higher levels of play in rugby union.

Injury rates have increased in the professional era.

Most injuries are now seen in the third quarter of the game, a finding that may reflect new substitution laws.

There is a need for standardised collection of injury data in rugby union.