"12 of the 15 All Blacks have played for just one franchise their whole career, and 9 have done so over a hundred times!" – Tank Lanning(on Twitter)

Volume 1, Number 6 13 September 2018 Register to receive your own free weekly newsletter at www.leopardnewsletters.co.za

Massive threat to World Rugby emerges

As you may recall, our main story last week dealt with SA Rugby’s plans to reduce its salary bill by reducing the number of locally contracted players from almost 1000 to well under 500. One of the concerns raised by World Cup-winning former Springbok coach, , was that this could lead to the best of our players heading north to play in European leagues, leaving the local game weaker due to the loss of our best players.

Well, an announcement last Thursday seems to provide impetus to that concern: global equity firm It will be the rugby equivalent of cricket’s IPL and, CVC Capital Partners have made a £275m (R5.2bn) as we have seen there, national teams, provincial proposal to buy a 51% stake in the Premier Rugby franchises and clubs have to make their plans around Ltd (PRL), the organisation that owns and runs the that tournament and hope the key players don’t get English Premiership. For background, CVC is the injured. They have no power to stop them playing – company that owned F1 for a decade and who made a and earning the very good money on offer. huge earnings success of that form of motorsport. But perhaps more importantly, the IPL runs for Craig Ray has penned a piece on All Out Rugby that slightly less than two months each year – the 2018 delves into the implications of the deal, should it season began on 7 April and ended on 27 May. The come to pass. English Rugby Premiership begins in late August or early September and runs through to late May the Of most concern to is that CVC will following year (with two five-week breaks along the want to make the English Premiership the best league way). in the world. That means the best players and coaches, the best stadiums and marketing, and the UPDATE: It emerged late on Tuesday that biggest global audience. For this to happen, first port the premiership owners have turned down an £275m of call will be New Zealand, South Africa and the offer from CVC. Good news for the game but there's Pacific islands for the best players. a possibility that the company's focus will just shift to another league.

KEY TOPICS IN THIS NEWSLETTER REGULAR FEATURES

To run or not to run Examining the Laws of the Game Boks “humiliating” defeat in Australia Video Analysis in Rugby South Africans playing overseas The Schedule this Weekend

Page 1 To run or not to run teams were supposed to work on their defensive structures given their commitments as An interesting discussion popped up on Twitter last well as the loss of players to the Springboks and to week that got your correspondent thinking about the leagues in Japan and Europe. style of rugby we try to play in South Africa these days. It was instigated by a tweet from JJ Maritz ( After a bit of a digression into the merits (or @JJMaritz), in which he wondered about our otherwise) of tackle bags and a brief discussion on unhealthy obsession with running rugby at Currie kicking and some of the kickers of yore, Jonathan Cup level and suggested that it has resulted in Hughes (@Groovejets) brought the discussion back defensive weaknesses at international levels. to the defensive frailties of rugby teams: “Also better fitness with that defence. Watching teams from any A Tweep calling himself Zibbie (@ZbBlik) raised a country dwindle at the 30 or 50 minute mark is very good point when he asked when Currie Cup getting depressing.”

Maritz agreed and put this down to the use of replacements as “impact players”, which he contends means that most players don't have 80 minutes in them anymore. You can catch the full, and highly entertaining thread on Twitter.

Maritz supplied the chart below in support of his argument.

Page 2 Page 3 Boks “humiliating” defeat in Australia

After last weekend's loss by the Springboks to the Australian Wallabies, in Brisbane, the sports critics have been out in force. Perhaps the most scathing description of the game was seen on Twitter when, in promoting an article by Stephen Nell, the All Out Rugby social media team opined that the “Boks must regroup after a humiliating defeat in Brisbane to face the All Blacks”.

Local columnist, Mark Keohane, called for some perspective, reminding rugby fans that it was but a one score defeat at a venue where the Springboks have only won once in 11 attempts. This, he added, is disappointing yes, but not humiliating. Fortunately, most fans know that Mbonambi is made of sterner stuff. He will take that, process it and come And Keohane would be correct but the knives were back harder and better the next time he gets a chance. certainly out for the coach. Above all, Rassie was That’s what he has done in the past and it is what criticised by many pundits for yanking Bongi most of us expect him to do in the future. Mbonambi off before half-time. Apparently, the assembled punditry believes that only injury-forced All of that said, the coming weekend’s match against substitutions should be made before the 60 minute the All Blacks will have all Springbok fans worried, mark. at the very least. The spectre of another record defeat looms to such an extent that a loss by 10 points or If Mbonambi is such a weak character that he will be less may even be seen as a victory given the way the adversely affected by his coach’s loss of confidence New Zealanders have swept away Australia and in him in one game, then he shouldn’t be playing in previous matches. Kick-off is at 9:35 if rugby at all, let alone at the highest level. you have masochistic tendencies.

Boks “plummet” down world rankings

The latest world rugby rankings have South Africa at 7th, the equal lowest ever since the rankings began. (The last time the Boks were 7th was just last year under - Ed).

Many reasons are being cited for this unhappy scenario. Indeed, Tank Lannng (@Front RowGrunt) tweeted a story that highlighted the inevitable comparison with New Zealand: “12 of the 15 All Blacks have played for just one franchise their whole career, and 9 of them have done so over a hundred times”.

There’s another comparison between the two nations worth raising, one linked to in last week’s newsletter when SA Rugby CEO Mark Alexander is quoted saying New Zealand has between 440 and 500 players on its books while South Africa has almost 1000.

Page 4 Page 5 Examining the Laws of the Game

The laws governing what is and isn't permissible on a rugby filed in a tackle are probably among the most complex to understand for anyone interested in the game of rugby. Even in the newly simplified rugby laws, there are many conditional rules around the tackle.For example, it is explicitly stated up front that, the tackler must:

Immediately release the ball and the ball- carrier after both players go to ground. Immediately move away from the tackled Failure to comply with any one of the above player and from the ball or get up. requirements, should result in a penalty being Be on their feet before attempting to play the awarded to the opposing team. There is much more ball. than we have space for but you can find more about Allow the tackled player to release or play the this and about all the laws of the game that we all ball. love here. Allow the tackled player to move away from the ball.

Video analysis in rugby

Most fans are aware that national teams video analysis research in rugby and big clubs make extensive use of video union: a critical review”. Engage analysis in preparation for each match. But, provides a brief synopsis. for most of us, what, exactly, that entails is a bit of a mystery. Fortunately, help is at Perhaps the most important thing to hand – if you have the energy to read the understand is that this was a study of fairly lengthy dissertation on the subject other studies on video analysis. As published in the journal Sports Medicine – such, the authors found a disturbing Open. lack of standardisation among studies of this topic to the extent that they The paper is entitled “The what and how of wondered about the usefulness of the findings to coaches and practitioners.

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Page 6 South Africans playing overseas Also playing this past weekend were:

Pierre Schoeman, WP Nel and Jaco van der The front page story last week and in this issue got Walt (Edinburgh) me wondering exactly how many local players are and Wiehaan Herbst for plying their trade overseas. So I did a bit of research (Ulster) this weekend – mostly using the Ultimate Rugby app and Jaco Taute (Munster) on my smartphone – check it out on Google Play or Oliver Kebble for (Glasgow) in the App Store. Johan Meyer and Francois Brummer (Zebre) Dewaldt Duvenage and Irné Herbst (Treviso) This allowed me to create a list of local players who as well as played last weekend in the PRO14, the Gallagher Tom Botha () Premiership and the French Top 14. Others may return from international duty or the injury list and be If we include Steyn and van der Merwe, a team of added to our list as we go through the season. these players would be somewhat unbalanced with two looseheads and three tightheads, only one lock, It should be noted that, for now, I limited myself to three flankers, an eighthman, a scrumhalf, two those three European leagues because they are flyhalves, a left wing and a fullback. Next week we’ll considered the pinnacle of European club rugby. But look at the Gallagher Premiership while still I also plan to look at the Japanese league as well as monitoring the PRO14 for other players with South those elsewhere in Europe and around the world. African roots. That’s all on the agenda for discussion in future issues.

The goal is to build a picture of who is playing where, how well they’re doing and, ultimately, establish if a team selected from players in faraway lands would challenge the current Springboks. For the purposes of this exercise, and in the first chapter, we’ll ignore the players representing the and in the PRO14 competition and focus on the other South Africans playing in that league.

This past weekend saw fifteen South African-born players in action in the PRO14.However, Treviso’s Braam Steyn has played for Italy and would be ineligible for Springbok selection and Glasgow’s DTH van der Merwe has Canadian links – he also plays left wing and would have to be another Jono Lomu for Rassie to consider him ahead of Aphiwe Dyantyi.

Click on the image for more information

Page 7 The Rugby Action this Weekend

Apart from matches (All Blacks vs Springboks at 9:35 and Australia vs Argentina at 12:00), there is plenty of other rugby action this weekend.

The Currie Cup Premier League fixtures appear alongside but there is First Division action too with the Border Bulldogs entertaining Eastern Province on Friday night. On Saturday, the Valke welcome South Western Districts to the Barnard Stadium at 3pm while across in the Free State, the Griffons host Boland in Welkom, also at 3pm.

Later that evening, the Cheetahs host the Glasgow Warriors in (19:30 kick-off) while the Southern Kings are also back home to take on Ulster in their third round clash on Sunday afternoon (14:15 kick-off). The local teams will be desperate to turn their seasons around after both suffered two losses on the trot in Europe.

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