It was revealed recently that Rassie Erasmus, the ex-Bok loose forward, ex-Bloemfontein rugby stadium disco DJ and now top dog of Western Province rugby, wants to launch a shortened 20/20 styled version of rugby. In short, after a couple klippies, Rassie came up with an idea of making a cash cow out of rugby.

Lekker ideas always follow a quiet drink or two.

He took this idea a step further over the weekend by submitting a proposal to Oregan Hoskins at SARU. Sadly Hoskins didn’t laugh him off straight away and this to me says that trouble could be brewing as who knows where a foot in the door will take this unnecessary rugby sideshow. Basically Rassie’s idea is to pit the world’s best rugby players against each other in a two week tournament, with manufactured teams acting as ideal canvasses to be painted with the money brush of professional sport. This circus is proposed to take place prior to the Super 15 meaning that our top players will then be playing rugby in January. Ya I know, sounds ridiculous.

The money may be good, but our players will be over-worked.

Rassie has always been a bit of a maverick and this was positively channeled as a player and coach, but Rassie, boet – no. I’m sure you can rustle up sponsorship, pull a few strings and maybe even grease a few palms to make this happen, but no good can come from it. It has been well documented time and time again that our players need rest, now flashing money in front of them to play in January and then play a full normal season with the new extended Super rugby campaign (Super 15 a joke in itself), Tri-Nations and Northern Hemisphere tour. Hell no, this is going to undermine the ability of the Bok team and that is on a par with treason if you ask me.

Rugby doesn't need an IPL.

The players will obviously take a pay day when it comes (apparently two weeks play for a years money), especially in a sport like rugby where injury could cripple you, so the fault is not with them. It lays firmly at the feet of greed merchants like Rassie who seem keen to prostitute the game. One only has to look at the IPL to realize that too much of a good thing is very dangerous. Just imagine if Rassie gets his way and they try “IPL” up rugby. There will be things like time outs, oh ya, a team has their opponents on the ropes in their 22 then suddenly they call a pre 5m scrum time out – brought to you by Energade of course. TMO calls, oh ya, “This TMO decision is brought to you by Adcock Ingram pregnancy tests – get the right result every time”. We will have Vodacom tries, Spur conversions, PPC cement scrums, Kalula.com lineouts and Captain Morgan coin tosses. It will be a commentators nightmare fitting all this into a coherent sentence (Garth Wright will simply explode under the demands), but whatever they say will be so secondary as the live feed will be a constant back and forth between game visuals and dancing girls flaunting the colours and sponsors of the teams.

This much branding in rugby would be repulsive.

I should probably not go any further and give Rassie too many ideas. Bottom-line though, let’s focus on putting energy into existing structures with the sole goal of developing tomorrow’s talent. Let’s put our heads and money together to make club rugby a big deal and uplift communities in the process. Let’s get 7’s rugby into the townships, stuff like this is will lead to something. Sure rugby is a business just like human trafficking and dog breeding, but we all got into sport first and foremost because we loved it. Let’s keep that there and work with that original passion in mind. Rassie if you want to make a few extra bob then do some more Spur ads or patent that cool disco light system you had. I’m surprised you didn’t take that further by the way, it had major cross-over potential into all kinds of other sports.

Focus on the lights rather than trying to put your name in lights.

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