You might ask what do the Springboks and Stuart Tinner have in common on the 17th November 2009? If your answer is £250,000 you would be right.
Each received £250,000 for last nights performance and some may argue that Tinner showed more talent. Stuart Tinner by the way is the chap, who in his socks, kicked a 30 meter punt that landed on the cross bar in a half time competition at the Springboks vs. Saracens game.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3q-vAlYKsA[/youtube]
The story behind the Springboks rights fee of £250,000 for playing the Saracens is an entirely different and even more scary one as it shows how good rugby goes bad for £250,000.
It started in July when the Acting Managing Director of SA Rugby, Andy Marinos, recommended and advised SA Rugby that they earn a rights fee of £250,000 for each of the Leicester and Saracens midweek matches and that these games be considered not as “Emerging Springbok” games but as fully fledged “Springbok” games.
Quite apart from devaluing and pricing the intellectual property of the Springboks match 22 and management team at the bargain basement firesale price of £250,000, to play at Wembley, arguably the world’s best rugby stadium, he suggested that this would “prevent the loss of talented potential Springboks to other countries” and that this would have an “impact on the RWC 2011 squad”.
Marinos went on to say that he “considered it imperative that SA Rugby builds up a pool of Springboks for 2011 RWC” and so on Marinos’ recommendation and insistence, SA Rugby got suckered right royally in the boardroom and on the pitch these past 2 weeks.
Gate receipts from the Wembley match alone, against Saracens last night, were over £5million to Saracens. On the other hand, SA Rugby, for their efforts walked away with less than 5% of this and a black eye of note for losing 24-23 to the South African point scorers of Ernst Joubert and Derick Hougaard in the Saracens side.
The humiliation is unfathomable especially with the All Blacks, Australians, England, France, Wales, Scotland and Italian rugby unions and their national squads, ever present in Europe for the IRB sanctioned end of year tours and all their respective supporters, on alert.
The losses to Leicester Tigers and to Saracens by a Springbok side, on an end of year tour goes way beyond the score board and is not the fault of Peter de Villiers and his Springbok management team, but that of the decision made in July by Marinos, which set in motion this sequence of events and outcomes.
Consequently, the Springbok brand value has plummeted and has signalled it is available at these bargain basement rights fees, then the team has tumbled from the IRB’s Number One slot on the leader board to Number Two and now Peter de Villiers and the entire Springbok squad are on the back foot waiting to take on the bloodlust and feeding frenzy of the Italians on Saturday and the Irish next week.
This is a nightmare from hell, exposing all sorts of vulnerabilities at SA Rugby, dealing with all sorts of crisis from the Toulouse rasta wailing, to financial losses and all because this was set in motion in July by what can only be kindly termed, “a well intentioned but extremely naive recommendation” that SA Rugby will rue through to the 2011 Rugby World Cup, as long as the inmates are running the asylum.
Next up is Nick Mallet and Declan Kidney over the next 2 Saturdays and Italy and Ireland, have signalled that they are ready willing and able to also claim a Springbok scalp.
If only we really send our second best team. We send lambs to be slaughtered. We need to have a b team playing on a permanent basis against strong opposition, its about teamwork.
@Snoek:
“We need to have a b team playing on a permanent basis against strong opposition, its about teamwork”
..
but
even THAT b team have to START from somewhere to be able to function as a team, isnt it?
So SA Rugby earned R6.25 mill from these 2 games. Not bad money, but surely they could have earned more? The idea of midweek games is great, as these traditionally were the vehicle in which fringe players were blooded, and also some got to play test matches, as the 1st choice players were injured or lost form.
I do not have a problem per se with the concept, but what I do have a problem with is the balance of the team selected, and the paltry sum we were paid.
Uh uhh… Aikona Irish.
Pass me in the pecking order i see…
250 large for n kick to posts?
Wow
5 mil to Sarries and 250k to SA?
Talk about a gap..
Snoek agree with you mate, 100% there. We need our very best 2nd side to be playing these mid-week games. If any injury to the Test squad they could slot straight in.
Those players left at home should have been getting game time over there. That would have been preparing us better for the world cup than sending players we all know that should not have been in the mid-week team. We have set oursleves back by doing that. When will our 2nd best now get a chance to be tested out against good opposition?
Let’s face facts here, SA Rugby admistrators from school level through provincial and S14 right through to the national team are, for the most part very poor at their jobs, and care nothing about looking after their most valuable assets, the players.
The whole thing makes me sick, and makes me want to kick any official involvement into touch.
The more some people advocate for positive change, the more those that are involved for personal self gratification and gain find reasons to keep the status quo.
Time I think to take some time away from the game, sit in my favourite armchair on a Saturday with some good company (Henry James Morgan?) and be able to criticise (or give credit) without fear of upsetting the wrong person.
Attitudes in Rugby in Southern Africa need to change.
I think two good thijngs will come out of this tour. One is that PdV has seemingly now decided that it is worth while to pick overseas-based players. The second one is that Hopefully after this tour (coupled with the last B&I Lions game) Div will realise that second best means second best. Not third or fourth best players, second best players.
The Ruperts aren’t stupid. Just out of that game Saracens paid all their contracted players contracts and gave us a measly 250000Pound.
Please do some math on flight tickets, players salaries and hotel accomodation and you’ll find that SA Rugby made a loss in this excercise.
Really now, who does the financial projections at SARU? This is what happens when an Ex-player of not so long ago is in charge. We also got screwed with the S15 cash cow.
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