The Emirates Lions have “reserved their rights” after the announcement that two of their players are leaving for the Cell C Sharks at the end of the season.
Lions CEO Rudolf Straeuli said on Friday that they were waiting for Sharks CEO Eduard Coetzee to return from a trip to America so they could discuss the issue as the announcements that Vincent Tshituka and Carlu Sadie had joined the Sharks were “premature”.
Straeuli reiterated the Lions “reserved their rights” on both players, intimating that a battle was on the cards for the services of the players but did confirm that captain Burger Odendaal had joined English club Wasps.
While Straeuli was fighting fire with fire since the announcements were made this week by the Sharks, it is likely the Lions will lose more players in the coming weeks as Wandisile Simelane has already been linked to the Bulls, with an announcement expected this coming week and Sti Sithole with the Stormers, according to reports.
The Lions did manage to re-sign Ruben Schoeman, their hard-working lock who extended his contract on Thursday with the side.
“We are definitely busy with recruitment, we have been actively recruiting junior and senior players and you can expect some announcements,” Straueli said when asked about why the outflow of players is significantly higher than the inflow at the moment.
“But some of the announcements that have been in the media have been premature. We can confirm that Burger has signed a contract with Wasps and we are obviously still in talks on when he is going to leave - his contract is only finishing in October.
“That is detail that I don’t want to go through for every player.”
Straeuli hinted that a legal fight could be on the cards for the players the Sharks announced, although in Sadie’s case, his contract ends next month and it is likely to make little difference.
“Basically like I said those announcements are premature. Eduard is in America, and we’re waiting for him to arrive back to see if we can solve it on an amicable basis. Apart from that we are reserving our rights. Vincent’s contract is only finishing in December and Carlu’s contract finishes in June,” he explained.
“Hopefully we can solve it amicably, but if not we reserve our rights.”
Straeuli denied the Lions were in crisis, but did intimate that there are other teams that aren’t following the same rules in terms of salary caps and budgets when it comes to players. Currently teams are allowed 50 players maximum but a task team is reviewing that for the industry and will report back to the franchises shortly.
“We have to relook our system, obviously recruiting junior players and for the Currie Cup. We are a bit thin or underdone in terms of players. But that has been because of our budgets and Covid, so it hasn’t been easy,” Straeuli said.
“We also have a salary cap in numbers and in monetary total annual spend. We have not spent our total annual spend, because we have not had that income. It is quite easy to explain why we have not had that income, because we have not had people through the gates and we haven’t had the same commercials in the days we had without Covid.”
“We would obviously like everybody to adhere to the same regulations that we are adhering to at the moment. I believe we have contributed in saving the industry and not going into liquidation and administration, so from the Lions’ side and the board and the chairman’s side we will not do anything that will put the business at risk.”