Why Stormers are on a slippery slope ...

Freelance writer and rugby365 contributor Drew Maclean tells us why the Stormers are on a slippery slope into a mire of mediocrity.

The Stormers have overtaken the perennial embarrassments the Lions and Cheetahs in the derision stakes in this year’s Super 14 as they continue their emphatic table slide.

In rugby’s normal following of many things from the world game (soccer), the coach is now the man held up as the scapegoat. But to lay this on Rassie Erasmus’s door is both disingenuous as well as overlooking what are obviously far more systemic faults that go well beyond the coach’s door.

Firstly, let’s lay the coaching bogey to bed now. Anyone who has worked with Erasmus on a technical level knows that he is a world leading technical mind. The stories of his laptop are legion. He is probably this country’s most advanced coach technically. One must think back to his unheralded, first time in 30 years, Currie Cup success with Free State. If you know anything about coaching you know it’s the coaches who can make a silk purse with a sow’s ear that are the great coaches. To win the Currie Cup on those resources as a first time out coach was extraordinary – that he turned that whole Union around showed it was not a flash in the pan of any form.

Witness to the success he achieved last year having just taken over the woeful Stormers. To come up within millimetres of making the play-offs was remarkable. Lets us remember that it was Nick Mallett (since fired by Western Province) who identified Erasmus as the man to turn the Union’s fortune’s around. He was not sought after by the current amorphous and obviously ineffectual hierarchy.

It takes some leap of faith to justify the many hundreds of thousand of rands spent on current WP Rugby managing director, Rob Wagner and Mallett to go to assess the coach during the disastrous 2007 Super 14 tour – to go and learn things about the coach that one assumes they did not know before he left a few weeks earlier.  And, Groundhog Day, this time chairman Pat Kuhn and president Tobie Titus jet across the world – one assumes not on Mango Airlines to Jo’ burg and a seat at the back of a plain – to visit the team, neither of whom are remotely equipped to assess anything of the technical preparation or team morale.

If one can have any queries over the current coaching structure it may be around man and media management and morale – but that is hard when you lose every week. The truth is the Stormers work best as a ‘community’ team and not as a removed professional outfit, with some upcountry has-beens being harnessed in for thick contracts.

But to continually lump that fact that the trophy cabinet in Boundary Road is best used to store shoe polish and the Handy Andy on the coach is naughty and short sighted.

Take a look at what is meant to be the Super 14 feeder team, the Vodacom Cup. Western Province, with arguably the best depth in the country, managed to squeak into fourth place this season to make the play-offs having beaten the remarkably awful Border, Eastern Province and Boland, who by their own admission and probably correctly, are focussing on the Currie Cup and maintaining their amazing A status. I would suggest most teams in the  world would beat those three except for Old Rotherhominonians Old Boys who play in Sussex division four.

The Vodacom Cup team is made up of professionals who at some expense have been training for six months, with nice contracts and kit, to come fourth in the South division. Western Province have never performed in this event, last year being knocked out by the Leopards after a promising start under Gary Gold is their best campaign to date.

The Currie Cup? What is that? You have to be getting on a bit now to remember a Currie Cup Final at Newlands with the team in recent years being nailed to a poor fifth place.

The only success that the union can boast are their two universities (University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch) which have seen them top the Varsity Cup table for the last two years as well as Maties winning it twice. Both are remarkable feeders and achieve their national success without any support from their Union. One would suggest that both these (amateur) teams could comfortably account for the professional expensive Vodacom Cup side. In fact Maties second stringers very nearly did in their last friendly.

The clubs from Western Province no longer receive any  financial support from their union – that was stopped after the prestigious Union found itself cash strapped (another article in itself) – but not so bad that it could not afford the largesse of trips and coach’s pay-outs. Province probably boasts the best club league in the country yet this is devoid of meaningful union support as each club stands alone trying to survive the Union’s whims despite providing a massive – unused – feeder system. This is the Union that has produced so many stars and so many players of colour, yet feels the need to have a Fijian, a Zimbabwean and a player bought in from the Lions on the wings despite its feeder base. All at great expense.

The tragic thing with sport nowadays is that the men in the trenches carry the can but those issuing the orders and making the appointments sail on from corporate suite to cocktail party. For them to clear their throats and say “err, umm, we messed up – we must go” would be refreshing and as probable as Turkeys asking for two Christmases.

* Did Drew hit it on the head? Or is he way off? Give us your view!