'Bad deal' could be beneficial

Simnikiwe Xabanisa: Reaching the second round of the World Cup has become a kind of Promised Land for Bafana Bafana.

It is widely viewed as the moment South African soccer will finally have taken a step in the right direction globally.

But if you speak to football people, Bafana would have achieved that at the 2002 World Cup had it not been for Jomo Sono.

"Bra J", as the Jomo Cosmos owner and coach is known, was the caretaker coach that year. The problem was that he hadn't stopped being the Jomo Cosmos owner and coach.

For those not familiar with Cosmos, the best way to explain the club is to say that it's a bit like OR Tambo Airport.

Players arrive only because the owner intends to sell them on to bigger local or overseas clubs.

Consequently, Bra J was accused of using the World Cup to showcase Cosmos carthorses such as Thabang Molefe, Teboho Mokoena, and McDonald Mukansi at the expense of the likes of Steven Pienaar and Jabu Pule.

Besides coaching, Sono and Springbok coach Peter de Villiers have very little in common.

But since it was revealed this week that the latter is part of a consortium which wants to buy shares in the Boland rugby union, one can't help but think back to another Korea and Japan scenario all over again.

De Villiers has roundly (and rightly) been criticised for considering taking up an ownership role before his contract with the Springboks is up.

The critics' obvious thinking is that all it should take is a hint of a conflict of interest for the deal to be undesirable.

As a colleague pointed out in corporate-speak, it's more a governance issue than it is a question mark over De Villiers's integrity.

Even if De Villiers were to expertly tip-toe the tightrope as a Boland owner and Bok coach, the precedent would lay the foundation for someone to abuse the situation in future.

That said, it is difficult to envisage a Boland player smash into the Bok squad between now and next year.

But what many people appear to be missing is that it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to have the likes of De Villiers and Victor Matfield (the other high-profile name among the would-be owners of Boland) involved in the ownership of provincial unions.

The unions need knowledgeable, passionate people with financial muscle to invest in them.

It is an open secret that most of the 14 rugby unions are technically bankrupt, thanks to a combination of archaic business practices by amateurs and a lack of real investor pressure, due to the safety net provided by Saru constantly bailing out badly run unions.

Having people -who have been at the cutting edge of world rugby and want to make money on their investment - looking over the shoulder of the blazer brigade might be the solution to the problem of our unprofitable rugby unions.

Maybe it's time more and more rugby people invested their time not only in coaching, but also in the ownership of rugby unions.