Four weeks have passed since Heyneke Meyer was appointed and still there is no clarity as to who will be on his management team in 2012.
When Meyer was announced as Bok coach on 27 January, CEO Jurie Roux said that Saru would invest its energy into the recruitment of top assistant coaches. Roux said that the matter would be resolved well before the start of the Super Rugby competition.
‘We have to do that soon, we can’t wait a month because that is too long,’ Roux
said at the time. ‘We will be in a lot of meetings and a lot of deliberations in the next two weeks, it’s important that we get the right people into those positions.’
A month has passed since Roux’s call for urgency, and yet not one assistant coach has been appointed. What has happened is that several candidates have declared themselves unavailable citing provincial obligations and the fact that they are already committed to what will be a long Super Rugby season.
Allister Coetzee said on Monday that he had been approached by Meyer, and that he had turned down the new Bok coach’s offer. This revelation by Coetzee was quickly followed by the Stormers and Western Province announcing that Coetzee’s contract at the Cape team had been extended by three years.
The Stormers also took the opportunity to announce the re-signing of defence coach Jacques Nienaber, who will also stay on with the Cape franchise until the end of 2015. The news effectively rules Nienaber out of contention for the Bok defence coach position. The Stormers have also made it clear on numerous occasions that their coaching staff is settled and focused on the Super Rugby task. Monday’s announcement of the respective contract extensions confirmed the fact.
Meyer was already in a difficult position on 27 January. He openly admitted that it would be a challenge to secure the release of top candidates and pleaded to the relevant unions to put the needs of South Africa ahead of their own.
Back then, it was suggested that a number of Bulls coaches were being targeted to join the Bok backroom. Four weeks later, and there is still no clarity on the availability of Bulls backline coach Pieter Rossouw, defence coach John McFarland and fitness coach Bazil Carzis.
They are yet to be ruled out as candidates, but are presently locked into contracts. The Bulls have lost a wealth of knowledge and experience with the departure of Meyer and a whole host of senior Springboks, and so may feel well within their rights to deny Saru and the Boks any further favours. The season is going to be hard enough for the Bulls without an abrupt exodus of coaching personnel.
Rassie Erasmus still appears to be in the picture, although nothing has been confirmed with regards to his accepting of a technical advisor position. Of all of those targeted by Meyer and Saru, Erasmus is the only coach who is currently unattached. Why then has he not been secured for another term as the Boks’ technical guru?
Following his appointment, Meyer said that he needs the right mix of coaching personnel if he is going to be successful. Unfortunately, he won’t get the team he originally wanted. It calls into question the timing of the recruitment process, and the timing of the head coaching appointment as well. Surely this mess could have been avoided.
If the Bok coach had been appointed towards the end of last year, steps could have been taken at an earlier date to secure the desired management team. The contractual commitments to the provinces would still exist, but surely the release of these coaches would have been easier before they became too involved in their respective teams’ Super Rugby planning and preparations.
