STRIKING IT RICH: Attitude change needed to drive SA interest in Champions Cup

WELL DONE DOBBO FOR PUTTING FANS FIRST

No sooner had the ink dried on the Striking It Rich I did from Dullstroom earlier this week than DHL Stormers coach John Dobson was busy setting straight one of my points. The one about South African coaches not getting it right when they put their team needs, relating to the timing of fixtures, ahead of the needs of the people who support them.

Dobson could have stuck to the EPRC team announcement protocols and kept his team’s first Investec Champions Cup opponents, Bristol Bears, guessing on who they’d be facing in Saturday’s clash at the DHL Stadium until the day before the game. Instead he decided to announce on Tuesday.

Dobson explained that it was about drumming up interest in the first game of a competition that is still not taking hold in this country to the extent that it should. The policy of leaving announcements so late when there was so much uncertainty of whether teams were going full strength in particular fixtures has been attacked in this column before.

In December 2024 I took a gamble and drove to Gqeberha for the Champions Cup game between the Stormers and Toulon. Well, okay, there was the rival attraction of spending a few days at St George’s Park watching the Proteas beat Sri Lanka in an important cricket test, but the effort wouldn’t have been worth it had Toulon fielded an under-strength team. They went full strength, and won, and it was a proper game.

The following season I got it right again - this time by not going to Gqeberha for the game between the Stormers and La Rochelle. There had been two classic clashes between those teams in previous seasons, but my gut told me La Rochelle weren’t going to go full strength this time. They didn’t. They fielded what looked like their under-21 team.

Dobson is correct when he says an early announcement helps his team’s supporters decide whether they are going to come to the game or not. When Damian Willemse, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Siya Kolisi are in the team it has to be a draw for fans.

If you want to sell the game, the paying spectators need to know what they are paying for. You don’t pay good money to go to a venue in the hope that Billy Joel might be playing there, you do so because you know he is.

JAKE’S WORDS HAVE YET TO BE FOLLOWED UP

Okay, so in that last entry there was a question I could have asked but didn’t but will ask now anyway - would Dobbo be as eager to announce his team early if he was going under-strength for the game?

I guess you don’t go under-strength for a home game, but the fact that so many teams do rotate selections is a problem for the competition.

It is the reason a promise I remember coming out of the mouth of Jake White heading into the first week of SA’s participation in the Champions Cup back in December 2022 has never really been fulfilled.

Jake spent some time at the post match press conference after his team won a URC game talking about the kick-off to the EPCR season the following week and said that South Africans were about to be exposed to a different level of competition, something that was a step up on anything they were used to.

If he’d been a publicist for the competition, he’d have done an excellent job. Jake might well have been preparing locals for the realities of competing in Europe too, for the huge disparity between the money the French clubs in particular operate on compared to the local teams was often, and probably correctly, a gripe of his during his years as Bulls coach.

And by the way, while on the subject, I also do agree with his central point that the SA rugby administration could do more to help the professional clubs and that level of the game. Putting the Springboks first has had pay-off over the past few years, but the chances of the current world champions sustaining their success does depend on the health of the level lower down and the feeder systems/academies etc in the various regions. The sport’s eco-system in this country can’t survive on the Boks alone.

But back to the main point - Jake spoke with great excitement about the Champions Cup back in 2022, but the realities of competing across two competitions quickly dawned on him and he invoked the ire of the foreign media when he went under-strength for a Champions Cup play-off game in Northampton a few seasons ago.

He had to do it if his Bulls were going to keep their URC campaign afloat, just as the Stormers and Hollywoodbets Sharks have also had occasions, several of them in fact, when they’ve had to prioritise one competition over another when it comes to selecting around logistical challenges.

But it is not just the SA teams that do that. There was a lot of hypocrisy to the UK media’s reaction to Jake’s decision because English teams and French teams have often sent their second string to away games. And from what I understand, it didn’t just start with SA’s participation in the EPCR competitions.

Admittedly it happens with the overseas teams mostly in the pool phases, but that doesn’t help sell the competition to fans who need to see the buzz before they can agree with all those television adverts that sell the Champions Cup as the greatest club competition on earth. And that is a big reason why Jake’s words have yet to prove prophetic.

If Saracens went to Durban for their game against the Sharks last December with their top team it would have been a meaningful event. That was another bit of travel I copped out of - I was all ready to travel to Durban for the game but then heard the England international players hadn’t travelled so opted to stay in Cape Town instead.

This has to change if the competition is going to get buy-in from SA fans, who are a new market, and to sustain the interest of the overseas audience that is starting to get frustrated by too many lopsided pool games.

MOST LOCAL CLUBS COULD DO A BETTER SELL

It would have come as no surprise to most local media people that it was the Stormers and Dobson that led the way this week on how to sell the game. They are the local gold standard when it comes to marketing and the media access that is necessary to create a narrative that sells a game.

We didn’t just have Dobson and his skipper Ruhan Nel up on media duty this week, Damian Willemse was also available for a pitch side interview.

Which contrasts markedly with what happens at some of the other clubs. I am not sure I blame the Sharks for not busting a gut over their Challenge Cup game against Lyon, for after all it is just the Challenge Cup and the game is away. But it feels like more could have been done by the other local teams generally, be it Champions Cup or URC.

There is a need for coaches to realise that while media work might feel like a chore, it is a vital necessity if you are going to proactively grow your brand and the awareness/interest in the competitions you participate in.

And seeing Pat Lam is in Cape Town this week with Bristol, this is a perfect time to highlight the gold standard globally of what I am referring to. The Bears director of rugby made headlines in the UK last week by announcing that he was going to introduce an NFL-style open post-match media approach to accredited journalists to help sell his team to the wider public.

In terms of his policy, all media members possessing valid passes will receive full access to coaches and players after matches. Allow me to be honest and admit that I don’t particularly fancy an environment where after games we head into the players’ change-rooms, which is what Lam is enabling, but it would be good for the sport. Formal press conferences don’t facilitate the type of story telling, the kind of personal level contact, that is needed.

THE BRENDAN VENTER ENIGMA

Okay, so let me throw in a bit of a curveball now to illustrate that there are reasons that, while coaches must be made to see the necessity about being open with the media, I can understand why there are some who struggle with it.

And one of those who struggles with it is Brendan Venter, who has just taken up what is effectively a director of rugby position at Saracens but until recently featured the words “wine consultant” in his job title so he could escape the media obligations that come with the directorship and which people in that position are tied to as per agreement with competition organisers.

Brendan has been forced to change after his club was fined for non-compliance and by all accounts his subsequent first press conference, where he railed against “autocratic” Premiership rules and gave lots of one word answers hasn’t eased the focus on him.

But here is something interesting and maybe talks to a problem that rugby needs to sort out - Brendan is actually very far from being anti media. If you want to get a well thought out explanation for something that is happening in rugby and a view on the potential of a certain player, a simple phone call will unveil a Brendan Venter that is very eager to talk rugby.


He kind of explained his reticence to do media in his first ‘forced’ press conference as the Saracens boss when, in almost as many words, he admitted that he fears his impulsive hot headedness.

As a player Venter was known as a difficult customer for many media people because, to put it frankly, he doesn’t suffer fools easily, and finds it hard not to speak his mind. Or voice his displeasure at something.

My first one-to-one exposure to Venter was at the Hamilton airport in New Zealand the day after the Springboks had beaten Waikato during the 1994 tour. We, meaning Boks and media, were about to fly to Wellington for the second test of the series when I happened to be behind Venter as he was

 browsing through a Kiwi Sunday newspaper that ran a guest column I wrote for them during that tour.
Having encountered my not very complimentary views on how the tour was going, an angry Venter swung around and said “Where is Gavin Rich?”

“Here I am!”

“What kind of South African are you that you can write stuff like this?”
He effectively called me a traitor to my country, but he seemed to take note of my response: “Brendan, I am a reporter, not a supporter.”

Our relationship was good after that. I remember having to squeeze past him in the aircraft to look for my seat before a subsequent flight and he greeted me with “Howzit Gavin”. My response was “I didn’t know I was Gavin, I thought you thought my name was Judas”. He thought that was very funny.

There’s always been a mutual respect since then and I doubt very much any other rugby media people who have sought out Venter on a personal level would describe him as difficult.

THE STRUCTURE AROUND MEDIA/COACH INTERACTION MAY NEED REFINING

The problem may not be Venter and his ilk, but a structure that may need refining. In 2012 he was effectively coaching the Sharks from behind the scenes, with Sean Everitt and Brad MacLoed-Henderson as his front men.

Something had happened that he needed to express his view on with but he didn’t want to blow his cover. So having got to know me quite well after we’d worked together on his weekly column for the Cape Times for a few years, he gave me a call and explained the situation.

He wanted the message put out but feared the lack of control that is part of the territory with the press conference environment. Which I completely get. So I wrote the story without blowing his cover.

I struggle with the press conference environment as Venter does as it is impossible to stick to the sense that you get from the one-on-one interaction that was the way of the sport back when I started in this job.

Venter will admit that he’s a maverick character, and frankly we need those people in the game. It is what makes him such a sought after coach. What may be needed when it comes to people like Venter isn’t censure but a rethink.

RASSIE WAS IN THE SAME PLACE BACK IN THE DAY

The modern conference is inadequate in many situations, as was highlighted to me in the RGR series when Rassie and Jaco Peyper were trying to push a narrative at one press conference around the All Black attempts to influence the refereeing.

I got what they were doing and so did most other seasoned hacks but the whole narrative that was being pushed kept on being hijacked by people asking what to me seemed superfluous, off the topic questions around things like Rassie’s attitude to South Africans who support the All Blacks.

Rassie was once like Brendan. He didn’t suffer fools very easily, he struggled to trust, and as a result his media policy when he first coached the Stormers back in 2008 was completely unsuited to purpose and it made him unpopular. He’s changed, so it is unusual for him to be anything other than polite or diplomatic.

But if Venter struggles with the sound bite style of modern journalism I completely get it. I don’t know the answer, but maybe some left field thinking and solution searching is needed around situations that arise like the one that has just arisen around Saracens" now former wine consultant.