When Ulster hosted the DHL Stormers in a Vodacom URC game at the end of March, they sent out a team sheet with the number of caps each player in the match day squad had to their names in brackets.
Stuart McCloskey was playing his 200th game in the Stormers clash, and there were three other players in the starting team that already had more than a double century of caps. In addition to that, there were another seven players who had over 100 caps, and there was one on 98.
It was fascinating to me as a possible reason, among several, that South African teams have yet to start shaping in the Investec Champions Cup. While Ulster might well be an extreme example, most teams playing in Europe have players who have played more than 200 games for them.
For example, when he left England for France, former England skipper Owen Farrell had played 254 games for Saracens. At the time of that Ulster game, the current England and now British and Irish Lions skipper Maro Itoje, who started his club career five years after Farrell, had just completed a Six Nations campaign but had 192 Saracens caps and was fast closing on his 200.
I was thinking of that this past Friday when, on the eve of his team’s game against the Dragons, Stormers coach John Dobson was extolling the loyalty of his star backline player and a double World Cup winner, Damian Willemse, who was playing his hundredth game for the Stormers.
What chance is there of Willemse doubling his number of caps? He had only just turned 27, so they should be quite good. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
For almost at the same time that Dobson was speaking so positively at the DHL Stadium about Willemse and his contribution, his Vodacom Bulls counterpart Jake White was 1461 kilometres at Loftus speaking with a very different tone as he bemoaned the ease and regularity with which star players from this country are lured to foreign clubs with big money offers.
His focus was Kurt-Lee Arendse, a player who he pretty much plucked from obscurity to create a top Springbok, who is unable to play for the Bulls in the URC playoffs because of his sabbatical in Japan and who now, apparently, wants to stay on in Japan. The Bulls are rightly holding him to his contract, which has another year and a half to run.
What he perceives as a lack of support for the franchises in their quest to keep star players in South Africa is a pet subject of White’s and it is good that it is because someone needs to keep beating that drum.
DOUBLE EDGED SWORD
Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus is no doubt envied by his fellow international coaches for being allowed to choose players who are based overseas, for very few of them are permitted that luxury.
But while the “all Bok players should be playing in SA” argument is a train that long ago left the station, the South African policy on the eligibility of overseas based players is nonetheless a double edged sword, particularly for those who believe that rugby in this country can’t just be about the Boks. For the rugby business in this country to be healthy, the next level of professional rugby down needs to be strong and healthy and well supported and the teams need to be competing for Champions Cup silverware.
Dobson talks about his “project” in doing so is suggesting he is building towards a day in the future where his team will be ready to bid for the world’s top club trophy. But there must be some unease in him - players like Willemse and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu are vital to any chances of future success, but both of them, like the rest of the squad, are contracted to 2027.
That is the year that Willemse could well become a three time Rugby World Cup winner and Feinberg-Mngomezulu could be the star turn of that tournament in Australia. When Willemse had his loyalty to the Stormers tested when the Bulls presented him with an offer in 2020 he was yet to become a global star.
That has changed and already there have been reports that Leinster have an interest in the gifted utility back. And given how the URC and Champions Cup operates as a shop window for financially strong foreign suitors, it would be surprising if Feinberg-Mngomezulu isn’t already being lined up for a big offer from more than one overseas club.
THERE ARE OFFERS THAT ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO REFUSE
Players can be loyal and who wouldn’t want to stay in Cape Town, but as the then Stormers CEO Rob Wagner told me when Jaque Fourie was lured to Japan 14 years ago, some offers are so big you just can’t refuse them.
There are also of course other reasons why players head overseas. English football star Trent Alexander-Arnold is leaving his beloved Liverpool, a club he has been part of since he was a young boy, at the end of this season to play for Real Madrid not because of the money but because, having conquered everything there is to conquer with Liverpool, he wants to experience what it is like to play in Spain.
There are rugby players who have the same attitude, and if I was one of them I would want to experience a foreign league before my career was over. But in the SA context money is a big draw for players who are a long way from the end of their careers (Feinberg-Mngomezulu will be just 25 in 2027) and, as Wagner says, there are offers that are almost impossible to refuse.
NEED INCENTIVE TO STAY HOME
They might be easier to turn down if there was enough incentive to stay home, which is why salary caps in this country, at least at franchise level, are a bad idea. And playing for the Boks should be part of that incentive.
I am not suggesting a blanket ban on overseas based players playing for the Boks, for that would weaken the world champions, and I confess I don’t have all the answers, but it is a conversation that needs to be had between the franchise owners and the national coach/national body.
Maybe what Juarno Augustus is doing can provide some instruction. The former Stormers No 8 is leaving Northampton Saints for Ulster at the end of the season as he wants to be playing in the URC, where he a challenge for Bok honours is more likely to be noticed.
Augustus has clearly noticed that Rassie is rewarding the form of local franchise players in the URC more and more, and perhaps there just needs to be a policy shift, as in a statement from the Bok coach to the top players that they have more chance of playing for the Boks if they are playing for local teams.
It may not seem fair, but treating each player’s case on an individual basis would also be fairer than just making all overseas based players ineligible for the Boks. The star players like Feinberg-Mngomezulu should be subject to exceptional and extraordinary attempts to get them to stay just because of what they bring to local rugby.
12 MONTH SEASON DOESN’T HELP
There’s something else that needs sorting out - the 12 months season the top players are subjected to. That the Sharks are struggling to get their money’s worth out of their Bok players is because there is no distinct off-season.
When Leinster’s Ireland players are enjoying their off-season, the Sharks’ Boks are playing in the Castle Lager Rugby Championship. If they had a proper off-season maybe the Boks on the Sharks’ books will start to have the same passion for that jersey as they have for the green and gold one.
With the financial wealth of their American equity partners, the Sharks are the local team best equipped to hold onto its top players, but the value of having those players is undermined by the never-ending rugby treadmill that makes it inevitable they will pace themselves.
This might seem a separate subject to the foregoing argument but it isn’t really. Having the players more available for top games impacts positively on the value to be had of keeping them and therefore justifies more money being offered to them. A distinct off-season may make staying on to be part of what their coach is building towards more attractive to the Stormers players who are intrinsic to the flamboyant playing style that is connecting the team to its supporters.
If those players go, and already it looks like Manie Libbok getting a Japanese sabbatical like the one Arendse is currently on, then instead of Dobson’s “project” reaching it’s culmination, which is European rugby and a target that won’t be reached in two years, there will have to be another rebuild.
The Bulls are also building towards that point, and Jake bringing Handre Pollard home is a big step. But it will be a step that is undermined if other players who White has been grooming for stardom do what Arendse appears to want to do by leaving Pretoria once that status has been attained.
So who’d want to be a South African franchise coach?