Cape Town — The South African Rugby Union can start a whole new Springbok era after this year's World Cup by appointing a new coach from outside the team.
In an unprecedented move for SA Rugby, they announced Bok coach Jacques Nienaber's departure after the World Cup, months before the team had even started their campaign.
How this will impact the Springboks on the field, we will have to wait and see in their first Rugby Championship and first World Cup matches later this year.
After that, it's maybe time for rugby's decision-makers in SA to get some fresh blood and new ideas into the national team as coach.
The Rassie Erasmus and Nienaber-era, after the bad years of 2016 and 2017, brought brilliant stability as well as the coveted Webb Ellis Cup and a British & Irish Lions series victory.
Stormers coach John Dobson has walked the walk in SA rugby and should seriously be considered as an option to take over as the new coach later this year.
Dobson has been through the ranks from the Western Province club rugby scene right to the top in coaching the successful Stormers side who won the United Rugby Championship in their first season in the competition.
What strengthens his case is that he has turned the Stormers, who haven’t won anything significant in international competitions, into a winning side. He took over a team that lost some of their best Boks in Siya Kolisi, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Bongi Mbonambi and Eben Etzebeth. He took over when the union was in turmoil and on the brink of financial ruin.
Players and staff were uncertain of where their salaries would be coming from. Dobson had offers to get away from a struggling Western Province Rugby Union, yet he stuck it out and transformed the Stormers into one that plays a fearless brand of rugby.
Of course, he had senior players and coaches who stuck it out with him, but they were willing to grit their teeth and stuck to the plan he had for an ailing Stormers team, just like Erasmus, Nienaber and company transformed an ailing Bok side.
With what Dobson has been through, it should’nt be a problem for him to take over at the Boks even if they don’t win the World Cup later this year.
If it so happens that the team falls short, he can be the coach who injects new life into the side over the next four years as they build towards to the 2027 tournament in Australia.
A winning team will give him the chance to build around certain players as he did with the Stormers when they went on their title-winning URC campaign last year.
Either way, he has a knack for developing players who maybe did not receive that attention from other coaches who they played under.
🚨 Coaching announcement: Jacques Nienaber will conclude his #Springboks tenure in France. "My sole focus is on seeing the Boks defend the Rugby World Cup title this year" - more here: https://t.co/GPmuUSVaYm#StrongerTogether pic.twitter.com/QETWzjp5Px
— Springboks (@Springboks) April 15, 2023
And the fact that this World Cup will be the final one for several senior players, the new coach will be in a perfect position to bring in some fresh faces for a build-up over the next couple of years.
Obviously, with WP Rugby being under administration by SA Rugby, he has worked with the mother body's interim chief executive Rian Oberholzer over the last few years in trying to keep the rugby side of things at Province ticking.
So Oberholzer has been his "boss" since being appointed as WP Rugby's administrator and can see the strides Dobson has made in establishing the Stormers as one of the top international club teams.
IOL Sport