Filthy lucre is not the only lure

When the Springboks started leaving the sinking ship, the materialistic among us thought it was the lure of lucre. The colonialists said it was quotas.

Rais Frost went to find out the real reasons.

The former koshuis scrumhalf, full-time attorney and sometime game-farm manager did a scientific assessment of why good players were leaving South Africa to play in Europe and Japan - and SA Rugby should listen to him.

When you begin to look at how many South African rugby players are not playing rugby at home you realise just how bad the scrum drain has been.

From Maks van Dyk, a 25-year-old Paarl Boys' High prop now playing for Toulouse, to Jannie du Plessis and Gurthrö Steenkamp, two experienced old hands of the front-row dark arts and current stalwarts at Montpellier and Toulouse respectively, you could put together a formidable Exiles XV that would not only push the Boks close, but probably New Zealand and England, too.

Rais did not accept the conventional wisdom. For his MBA thesis he found 18 reasons analysed through player interviews. In the process, 12 common themes that hold insights and lessons for professional rugby in South Africa emerged.

Money, he discovered in interviewing these rugby emigrants, was not the great motivation. Instead, the reasons lay elsewhere.

An obvious advantage to playing in Europe is time. A trip, even across the English Channel, means no more than two days away from home. For those with families, that is a huge plus set against the enervating journeys of Super rugby: two days away from home compared with three weeks.

A surprise finding was that the establishment perceived 30 to be the threshold for Test rugby. Once you pass the "30-year-old ceiling" (Frost's words), you are over the hill in South Africa. The system, whether actively or passively, works them out.

Last season the oldest Bok was Bryan Habana at 33 and the only old ones who survived until the end of the year were Adriaan Strauss and Tendai Mtawarira, both 31.

Yet in Europe players in their mid-30s are considered in their prime. At Bordeaux, front-row forward Jean-Bapiste Poux is 37 and the club is hoping to get him back next year. Many of the best tight forwards in France are in their mid-30s and much appreciated. Jannie du Plessis, 34, his brother Bismarck, 32, and Steenkamp, 35, are still valued by their clubs.

If they were playing Super rugby back home, so the perception exists, the selectors would not look at them twice. In Europe, they are sought after as players and mentors.

SA Rugby needs to look deeper than players' bank accounts for the reasons it is losing good men.