“I don’t go backwards.” You sometimes hear people saying those words when it is suggested they return to a relationship that didn’t quite work out, but those words would not be relevant if the Cell C Sharks re-engaged John Plumtree as head coach.
Plumtree’s name will inevitably become a talking point following the parting of ways between the Sharks and Sean Everitt on Monday, if it wasn’t already after his brief visit to Durban a couple of weeks ago. Neil Powell has taken over the head coaching gap left by Everitt’s departure, but although it was never spelt out in the press release, that is likely to be a stop-gap measure until the Sharks can acquire an experienced, heavyweight coach to take charge of a squad of marquee players.
With John Dobson never likely to leave his beloved Stormers, at least not for another South African franchise, and Jake White tied up at the Bulls, there are no heavyweight coaches available locally. It would have to be an overseas coach the Sharks bring in. John Mitchell, another Kiwi who just happens to have a house in Durban and, like Plumtree, is married to a Durbanite (the two wives are in fact sisters), would be a good option too, but given his history at the Sharks, Plumtree would be the more obvious choice.
HE’D NEED TO BE IN CHARGE
It won’t necessarily be an easy task for the Sharks administration to get Plumtree to sign up. For a start, he might be fussy about his terms of engagement. No big coach, which is what Plumtree has become, is likely to just accept an environment where there is already a director of rugby in place who he might be answerable to. He’d need to be in charge, or at least have some autonomy.
And he’d also need to know how much interference there might be from American owners who are passionate about rugby but don’t necessarily have a proper feel for the game. Who makes the calls on recruitment? Everitt certainly didn’t, and Plumtree would be crazy not to insist on having those keys.
Then there’s the not insignificant matter of returning to Kwa-Zulu/Natal. Plumtree loved Durban when he lived there. But that was before the uprisings of July 2021, an event which among other things led to a chemical factory being washed down the Umhlanga River and into the sea in front of Plumtree’s old house. And if the Sharks are serious about wanting him to return, they should try and hide the fact that these days there is also heaps of human excrement in that sea.
REDRESSING A BAD DECISION
If Plumtree did decide to return though, it would not be a case of the Sharks rewinding the clock, although it would be seen to be a decision that redresses one of the worst of many bad ones made by the Sharks since 2013.
That was the year Plumtree was unceremoniously dumped by his former captain John Smit when the World Cup winning Springbok skipper was rushed into the Sharks CEO position. The subsequent nine years have been pretty awful ones for the Sharks. There have been two triumphs in the devalued Currie Cup, once in 2013 and again in 2018, but nothing meaningful in the competitions that matter, Super Rugby and the Vodacom United Rugby Championship, and there have been plenty of crisis moments.
Perhaps the most damning indictment of the decision to sack Plumtree lies in the Italian politics style revolving door that sums up the coaching situation since Plumtree left. If you factor in Plumtree himself, the Sharks have had eight coaches in nine years.
That is also surely a comment on the instability at the Sharks following the retirement of the long-serving and under-valued former CEO Brian van Zyl and before the arrival of American money from the investment company that baled the Sharks out of financial difficulty by becoming their equity partners.
Smit was appointed with no CEO experience, and his successor, Gary Teichmann, also a former Bok captain and Sharks stalwart, will admit he wasn’t prepared for the realities of the challenges facing a modern rugby administrator. If you want to play the blame game though, you can hardly point at those two appointees, but at the political upheaval when Graham McKenzie became the Sharks union president. It was in that period that Van Zyl was rushed into early retirement, which was the prelude to the indecent haste with which Plumtree was dispatched.
Plumtree, Brad McLeod-Henderson, Jake White, Brendan Venter, Gary Gold, Robert du Preez, Sean Everitt and now Powell. That’s the list of Sharks coaches since 2013. In the same period before that, the Sharks had just two coaches - Dick Muir from early 2005, when he took over from Kevin Putt, and Plumtree.
If the Sharks are looking for a big-name coach, it’s the right move. They have a team of high performing international players playing for him, and that requires a top name and strong coach to guide them. Not someone learning on the job. In the list of coaches from 2013 to now, apart from Plumtree there are two coaches that would qualify as heavyweights - White and Venter.
But Venter always had one foot in his medical practice in the Western Cape and preferred a background role, while in his year in charge in 2014, probably due to the injury to Patrick Lambie, White’s playing style, and also arguably his management style too, didn’t go down well in Durban. Since then, the appointments have either appeared to be stopgap or, without wanting to be unkind, there was an element before the American money arrived of “We’ll employ who we can afford”.
The man who will take over from Everitt has a formidable reputation as a Sevens coach, but this is his first top conventional code job. When the Sharks were blowing out against Cardiff in the wet weather on Sunday, the television cameras repeatedly picked out Powell at the back of the coaching box with his head in his hands. No doubt he was exasperated, but you have to ask what he knows about preparing a 15-man code team to play wet weather rugby.
BEING SACKED WORKED FOR PLUMTREE
The Sharks press release never explained this, but it can be assumed that Powell is the short-term stopgap, with Plumtree, or another international coach, the long-term goal. But a wind back to 2013 won’t be a case of going backwards for the Sharks. For being sacked by Smit nine years ago was probably the best thing ever to happen to Plumtree.
Just as a reminder, it was never a case of Smit walking into a winning environment and sacking a multiple trophy winning coach. Plumtree might be the first to admit that the Sharks were getting a bit stale in 2013, and that season they were struggling. Had he stayed on, he might well have freshened up by moving into a director of rugby role, and appointed someone else as coach.
Plumtree has grown though as a coach since he departed Kings Park HQ just because he hasn’t stood still. His axing at the Durban franchise meant he had to seek work elsewhere, and that work has taken him to Ireland, where for two years he was assistant coach to Joe Schmidt at international level.
He then worked as assistant coach at the Hurricanes in New Zealand under Ian Boyd before graduating to head coach, and then to the All Black assistant coaching role. He also helped Japan at the 2019 Rugby World Cup. He’s gained from what Gert Smal, himself a former Ireland assistant coach, would refer to as a cross-pollination of ideas.
The inside story of his axing at the All Blacks was that New Zealand rugby was looking for a scapegoat and Plumtree was thrown under the bus. He’d be the perfect man to take the Sharks forward, and it would be forward, for John Plumtree circa 2022/2023 knows a lot more about coaching and has been through so much more than the John Plumtree of 2013.