The recent acquisition of just about half of the Golden Lions Rugby Union’s commercial arm is a move long overdue.
I can only speculate what necessitated this move by the Lions because to be honest, their management in recent times never seemed the most forward-thinking but nevertheless, I believe this could be a watershed moment for rugby in South Africa.
As the media release read; ‘Now we can have business people looking after the business side of rugby, and rugby people after the rugby side’.
It might be oversimplifying a very complex issue but essentially, this is just what professional sport should be all about.
Of course my wish is that this is just the first step in a major drive to make the game of rugby more professional, but at least this is a start.
It is an argument raised many times before where South Africa is suffering as a rugby nation because we have rugby people trying to make business decisions and apart from being quite poor at this, they cannot detach themselves emotionally from important issues where an amateurish spite is more the norm in decisions made in rugby than logical business decisions.
You see from a business perspective your first priority is to look after your assets, ensuring that as a business, you produce a great product you are trying to sell television networks or essentially, the rugby public.
If this happens from the top you have a domino effect going down all the way to the very bottom, where not only the people in the boardroom conduct themselves professionally, but it would then also be expected that any staff member and essentially, the playing and coaching staff do exactly the same because if you don’t, you need to ship out.
For too long have administrators, coaches and even players enjoyed a free ride in what is, and make no mistake, a very lucrative business, at the expense of the game and effectively, the paying public.
Of course what I would effectively love to see is business consortiums, like the Guma Group and TransAfrica Capital actually bidding and owning the Super rugby franchises where they will enter into partnerships with local (regional) union(s) taking the responsibility of investing back into unions to produce quality players and coaches, but for the first time I believe we are at least moving in the right direction.
This should not only be exciting times for the Lions rugby union and Lions fans, but an exciting event for all of us because if this actually comes off, we might just see the birth, or as some would like to think, the re-birth of South African Rugby as the powerhouse of world rugby.
Hear Hear Morne!!
You can be sure that Ichikovitz and Gumede will make a drastic difference to this Union!
The concern that I have is that Messrs de Klerk and Reyneke both consider themselves to be very good businessmen, and as such believe that they have run the Union / Company / old boys club very well.
Most people of course know that this is not the case.
The new “partners” have a 49,9 percent stake in the Union but what part of the Union and what powers will they really have?
The whole GLRU underwent massive and extensive re-organisation 2 years ago under the leadership of Prof Ferreira and Peet Buys, and legally is (at least for a layman like me) very difficult to understand.
For example, as I understand it, the GLRU Trust holds all of the finances for the Golden Lions, and dishes the money out and is “owed” the money by the Union.
The Super Rugby franchise (Lions Rugby (PTY) LTD is a separate entity from the Currie Cup side, and the stadia, (Coca Cola Park and JHB Stadium) are owned by Ellis Park World of Sport, which in turn is partly owned by Orlando Pirates. Don’t any of you remember the big fuss made when the GLRU announced THAT innovative BEE deal?)
So anyway, enough rambling. I think that while any form of increased financial income into the JHB Rugby fraternity must be positive, as I said on another thread, whether the GLRU have a collective will to change remains to be seen.
I just hope that the new “partners” force the management in Doornfontein to do things in a more businesslike manner across ALL aspects of their sphere of influence.
jeezz….thought I logged into Computer Warehouse….
Well, this place so dead the webmaster can’t make a living from it so I suppose he better advertise, yet not the widest of audiences.
pam @ 4
😆
@ Pam Anderson: 😆 Good laugh there. But have to say those ads are good though.
The Ads were there more for effect than anything else and to TEST out our TOP and BOTTOM Advertisement spaces to see what it would do to load times…. working pretty damn well, seeing as I made the Ads very big…
Gbs,my personal opinion is to just have the ad on the bottom of the page or it makes the site look cluttered when you are on the site or move around the various threads that are up.
9@ Winston:
Taking the Ads off for now… during the weekend we want to concentrate on the Game Threads.
Its a good idea that you had,sure you got a good response,maybe just think about making the ad’s a bit smaller. You should get some pretty ladies to advertise Pc’s 🙂
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