VIDEO: Rassie on why young talent should cut their teeth in South Africa
WATCH as Springbok head coach Rassie Erasmus highlights the importance of young up-and-coming players earning their stripes domestically.
Erasmus spoke about the Springbok financial and contracting model and provided insight on key elements the national selectors look at before selecting a player based abroad.
“In the early 2010s, there were only 12 or 13 contracted Springbok players.
“We then moved to a model of a tri-party agreement, and now we are on a Player Of National Interest [PONI system].
“We sign players from various academies coming from the junior structures.
“We are trying to keep the younger ones in South Africa.
“We believe when a young player goes abroad, it’s difficult to select a player. There are very few that we do [select] that works.
“We believe a player should stake his claim locally before going abroad.
“It’s difficult to rank [young] players playing in various overseas leagues if we don’t know them.
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Erasmus explained how the financial structure works for junior to top-level players, so that they can keep the best talent in South Africa and help lure experienced players back with an incentive from the PONI budget.
“The PONI system has a budget we work with and meet with the various franchises.
“That budget is our succession planning because it must be PONI players who will probably play for the Boks in future [the budget will be spent on].
“If there’s any money left from that budget, such as Joseph Dweba leaving [the Stormers] and money is freed up and a guy like Handre [Pollard] comes back, we can add a little bit more [to their salary].
“We currently contribute to 50 and 60 players from junior level up.
“That’s much better than the old days where we had 14 signed players, and only four of them played 50 percent of all the matches they could’ve played.
“So where we can, we will contribute, so when we get an experienced guy back like Handre [Pollard], that helps.”
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SA Rugby CEO Riaan Oberholzer added: “We don’t contract the players, it’s up to the franchises to bring the player back [to South Africa] within a salary cap that they agreed on themselves.
“They can contract [players] within a salary band and agree what the amount will be.
“The contribution from SA Rugby’s side is to the players’ salary and not to them directly, but to the union [franchise].
“That helps the franchise to be able to contract the player, but we don’t contract players directly.”
