Former Baby Boks, Lions and Boland coach Eugene “Loffie” Eloff will coach the Border Bulldogs in this year’s Vodacom Cup.
Sport24
Eloff will have a tough task in East London though, as Border currently only have 12 contracted players and are in dire financial trouble.
Eloff believes that he can find young and exciting prospects by integrating club players into the provincial team.
Border start their Vodacom Cup campaign at home to the Sharks XV on the weekend of 7 to 8 March.
Eish Loffie. Hope you get your salary cheque every month.
If you don’t, just ask Jurie Roux for a few bokke. I’m sure he squirreled enough away when he was at Stellenbosch.
But in a more serious light, Border have heaps of talent at junior levels, and Loffie does seem to be able to bring youngsters through into the professional ranks.
My question has to be why aren’t SARU actively involved in DEVELOPMENT initiatives in the Border (and SWD and EP) region(s) to get that talent at schoolboy level through to the professional ranks?
Is it possibly just too easy to take “historically previously disadvantaged” kids who are at the “traditional” Rugby schools and push them as bastions of “transformation”?
Just to inform you SARU, a kid “of colour” who attends a school like KES, Waterkloof, Pretoria Boys High, Monument, Affies etc etc etc, can hardly be held up as a shining example of Rugby development, but a kid who attends a “township” school in Mdantsane and makes the Border Craven Week team can.
I wonder which is the “path of least resistance” for SARU in these 2 examples, and which they (SARU) would choose to take?
Eish some things get my blood boiling!
@ Scrumdown:
The trouble is here that Hoskins brokered a deal fro Andre Kilian to come in as a 49% partner in Border Rugby and run the Academy and “put in” R1.2m in exchange for all the marketing rights and broadcast fees of R7.4m.
A deal so sweet and skewed it stinks of noxious gases that makes you vomit in your mouth – which is small wonder that has now put Border Rugby Pty Ltd at loggerheads with the Border Rugby Union (Amateur).
This then is the cess pool that Loffie has been thrown into at the deep end nogal. No money no support, no admin, no back up, no idea and all set to hit the fan in the next few weeks.
A day trip by Jurie Roux and Basil Haddad to Buffalo City 2 weeks ago, to spend a couple of hours in an endeavour to fix this has done little to nothing to cure the troubles of Border Rugby Pty Ltd, Border Rugby Union, Southern Kings partnership Agreement with EP Rugby of which SARU holds 49% in EP Rugby and wants to offload this for R12m to Rian Oberholzer, manager of the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, to SARU elections in March.
Of course the University of Stellenbosch saga and KPMG forensic report that has revealed the smoking gun of fraud and self enrichment leads to a super confidential meeting between KPMG and certain SARU Exco members is like putting out the fire with gasoline, if I can borrow a line from David Bowie.
So SCRUMDOWN – all is not entirely well and Loffie Eloff try as he might needs a miracle maker.
3 @ TonyM:
Phweeeeew!
Sometimes, when I see people like TonyM and Scrumdown discussing SARU’s failings, the nepotism and underhanded dealings and with teams, coaches and Unions set up to fail spctacularly, I often think that the casual rugby supporter who is a mere consumer of the game and does not read anything but the MAIN rugby news, is somewhat lucky, in a sense.
They are largely sheltered form the “Doings and screwings” of those that wield power…
But then again, I need to know more, I have always wanted to know more, do more and sap the full benefits from rugby and from life in general!
All that I can say, the Circus is in town and sem set to stay and play in front of a limited audience, with crappy clowns, hamstrung horses, sick lions and an intoxicated ring master who does not know what he’s doing!
@ TonyM:
The question that I honestly have to ask is who are SARU accountable to in terms of governance?
The Jurie Roux affair makes me sick, as it should to any club in SA surviving on a pittance year after year.
The ongoing “indescretions” of the SARU Exco’ in terms of their governance of Rugby in SA needs to be bought to book, but alas I think the “old farts” at the IRB “club” really don’t give a toss about sorting this type of thing out.
I had a thought that what is needed is possibly a government commission of inquiry to try to get to the bottom of all the cr@p, but I think that we all know that all that such a thing would do is waste money and eventually sweep everything under the carpet with a higher price tag.
Tony what do you think can be done to improve what’s going on at SARU and it’s affiliates?
When we (eventually) managed to change the Exco’ at the GLRU / Lions from within, the amount of damage done was already extensive, and those who we elected to sort out the historical nonsense have, by and large been innefective.
There are no people currently on the SARU Exco’ or the President’s Council that inspire me with confidence to take Rugby Union forward in South Africa.
Gee, Hoskins, Mark Alexander (FFS) and Kevin de Klerk are all supposedly available for election as SARU head honcho, but in all reality it would be a case of eeny, meeny , miney, mo as to which of them would be the best person to take take the helm.
IMO, Rugby people voting for either of those 3 to take Rugby forward would be tantamount to a flock of turkey’s voting for Christmas.
Tony, please allow me to say that it is only because of people like yourself and Graham Joffe that these absolutely dispicable deals and “agreements” are highlighted and bought to every Rugby lovers attention, and I for one really appreciate what you are doing for the cause.
Please keep it up and don’t release the pressure.
If there is anything that I can do to help you, please feel free to contact me through GBS.
3 @ TonyM:
When one realises that the likes of Riaan Oberholzer “own” the PE stadium, then it becomes vividly clear why things like the SA leg of the 7’s were awarded to PE, over and above the likes of Durban and CT.
Not that I’m saying the tournament is a heap of sh1t. I flew down for the weekend the 1st year it was held there and was impressed by the stadium itself, and the organisation of the tournament was (for the most part) okay, but eish. Location, location, location, and parking. (What parking?)
Oh, and I peronally won’t go back until they change the “rule” that if you would like to drink a beer you have a choice of Castle Draught, Castle Draught or Castle Draught. But that’s just my personal choice, I’m sure most people don’t worry about it.
It is scary to think that SA does so well in world rugby, in spite of the administrators, not because of them.
6 @ Scrumdown:
In a proper system of rugby checks and balances, government need never be involved in how rugby is run by SARU.
However, the current dispensation and entrenched self-serving interests of President’s Council members, Unions and the “Boetie vir Bandjie” system which has come so far and for so many years within South african rugby, plays right away from exactly what is needed and required in the checks and balances system.
The system is fatally flawed, the puppeteering and shenannigans going on at President’s Council and Exo level, just cannot and will not sort out the issues the way it is supposed to happen.
All that will happen in the SARU elections, is one power grouping might replace another, if at all.
The broken elements won’t be fixed, the status quo will continue to be flawed.
Accountability requires a willingness and determination to rid SARU of it’s illnesses… and I do not see that happening.
@ Scrumdown:
Thoughtful passionate comments!
The trouble is & you have touched on it briefly as has GBS – is that there is no coherent planning into the future & I am talking next months Currie Cup format, 6 Super 15 franchise teams (one of whom has no games & has surrendered their right to play Promotion/Relegation, and generally the 2014-2015 season and 2015-2020 season, as 80% of rugby administrators are scrapping like junkyard dogs over a cast aside empty marrow bone.
Instead of standing up for the power and potency & residual asset value of over 651,000 registered South African rugby players, more than twice the amount of the combined NZ & Ozzie lot, we have a negotiating team (of 4) that has through stumbling, mumbling and bungling, surrendered over R500 million to our arch rugby enemies.
So now we have our South African rugby community scratching & scrambling in the next 2 weeks to cobble together some kind of tournament structure that looks like a jalopy from the Mad Max movie set, instead of a streamlined high performance Maybach.
Of the three prospective candidates for President of SARU, I can say that Hoskins and Alexander have cost SARU hundreds of millions and Kevin de Klerk is the only bona fide rugby man with a pedigree that is internationally respected and it is he who should be leading South African Rugby out of the darkness and into the light.
He knows what needs to be done 7 he knows who can and can’t deliver and he now needs to be given a 4 year term to fill the rugby treasury and bring new excitement and new meaning to South African rugby.
How SARU is still doing a kind of Deliverance soft shoe shuffle to the Kiwis & Aussies is beyond me, as they should be inviting the UK teams – where the spectators, fans & corporate & broadcasting revenues are, to come play this year, next year and the year after.
We are dealing with such mediocrity it is astounding & time is fleeting.
10 @ TonyM:
Tony, I was actively involbed in getting KdK elected, but unfortunately it’s not necessarily a question of WYSIWYG with Kevin.
Many of the undertakings that were made never materialised, or were so slow in materialising that they didn’t have the effect that we had all hoped for.
Even so, I’m sure he wouldn’t easily bend over for our Antipodean friends.
I just hope above all things that my small rotund “friend” Mr Alexander (the serial sports administrator?) doesn’t get the nod, because then we may as well all go and live in Perth.
Agreed he is probably the best of the three options, but isn’t it a sad day when these are the people that SA Rugby has to chose from to take us forward! (statement, not a question)
@ Scrumdown:
Then do pop along to the Rugby Museum at Ellis Park or better still connect with Swys Joubert on 082 550 2909 and have a chat with him.
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