VIDEO: White rips into player agents

WATCH as Bulls director of Rugby Jake White expresses his frustration with player agents following his side’s 45-21 United Rugby Championship win against Cardiff.

White was asked about his thoughts on player agents and if he felt that they were becoming a problem for South African franchises.

The World Cup-winning coach did not hold back in his response and warned that South African franchises should be careful, as allowing one player to leave can lead to a whole exodus.

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“Agents are genuinely not worried about the player,” White said.

“They just want the deal.

“They will always hammer that it’s their client, but I want to turn this around: We [the unions] are the client.

“If we don’t pay the players, there is no deal.

“So this thing where agents say: ‘I look after my client’, doesn’t hold water.

“The client is the union that pays the salaries.

“When agents have a mandate to send players overseas and still be eligible to play for their country, it’s like a freebie for them, let’s be fair.

“Other agents in other countries can’t send their players overseas because they won’t be eligible to play for their country.

“I say that from experience because when I was coaching the Springboks, I remember agents telling me: ‘You’re killing my job because you select the same Bok side year in and out’.

“Remember those days, there was the Kolpak deal where you had to play a certain number of games [for the Boks] before you could go overseas.

“And agents would tell me when I saw them: ‘You’re killing our business because every year you pick the same 25-30 players and the others can’t go because they’re not internationals and the ones that are keep getting selected so they’re staying’.

“I’ve got the first-hand appreciation of the fact that when agents got a free pass to send guys overseas, make money and still be eligible to be selected to play for their country, then they would do it.

“But they’re not helping the provinces.

“I’m old enough to tell you if Doc [Louis] Luyt was working, he would’ve called a couple of agents in and said: ‘Let me tell you how it works, boys, you’re not selling players overseas’.

“Because when we negotiate deals with sponsors in our country, our selling point should be that our best players are playing every week. Isn’t that how business works?

“One of the key things that happened when they signed the Super Rugby deal in 1995 there was this fear that we wouldn’t play our best players.

“One of the provisions of the Super Rugby deal was that we wouldn’t send second and third-rate players in comparison to the players that we had.

“I’m not for one minute saying the current players are second and third grade, all I’m saying is these are not the best players we can put on the field every week for four franchises.

“I’m not going to say ‘let it be, let’s accept it’ because it’s not [acceptable]. I’m in the job of winning matches.

“Taulupe Faletau coming off the bench [for Cardiff] is a British and Irish Lion, our guy that’s coming off the bench is not equivalent to anything to that.

White added: “We need to be careful. Should Kurt-Lee [Arendse] go, we will just start a whole new cycle of the next generation going.

“People will tell me there’s a wonderful wing at Paarl Gim and a wonderful lock at Ermelo, etc, but there always has been and there always will be.

“At the end of the day, we want to keep the cream playing every weekend together in our franchises.”