Seriously, What the F!

Robbie Fleck's stay as Stormers coach is more than about ineptitude and (lack of) franchise money. It exposes rugby's so-called professionalism as flawed and pretentious.

Back in high school, whenever you got a hard tackle – say a shoulder corner right in the sternum – and you lay there trying to catch your breath back and trying your darnedest to avoid looking humiliated, often the jibe that would come from your opponents was: "Gaan sokker speel." (Go play soccer).

The intimation was that you were too weak, or too black, to play rugby. Aside from the obvious racial prejudice that prefaced the jibe, I was always perplexed why they would pick on soccer as the alleged softer or easier alternative. Maybe it was the prevalence of 18-yard-area simulation or that in soccer a touch is a free-kick. But whoever came up with the "Gaan sokker speel" jibe obviously never saw Andrew Rabutla or Roy Keane play.

Also, whoever thought soccer was a "lesser" sport to rugby must have grossly miscalculated the respective codes' appeal. Soccer is a poor man's sport enjoyed by the rich, while rugby is the rich man's sport that's quickly descending into poverty – especially in South Africa.

When we talk of professionalism in sport and high performance, no sport is as brutal, demanding, intricate, nuanced and meticulous as soccer. Rugby's entire worldwide economy would not run the English Premier League for a single season; probably not even the Championship.

In money terms, rugby is in the ABC Motsepe League and soccer is the Uefa Champions League. The two are incomparable. Especially in South Africa where the broadcast rights holders, SuperSport, pay four times the price for Premier Soccer League rights than they do for Springboks and related rugby rights.

Mamelodi Sundowns could buy the Blue Bulls, if Patrice Motsepe wanted and instead of Steve Hofmeyr's Die Blou Bul song blarring out of speakers when the team runs out, you'd have Ka Bo Yellow! It would be so easy and wouldn't cost Motsepe more than he pays in taxes.

Soccer is brutal on under-performance. If you do not shape up, you ship out. It's that simple. You get compensated for your loss but they would rather pay you out than risk losing trophies, league titles, World Cups, championships or even derby games because of underperformance.

Yes, sometimes that win-at-all cost mentality morphs into impatience and – as we've seen with Roman Abramovic's Chelsea and Real Madrid over the years – petulance. But it's created an economy of winning, it's raised the performance level of everyone involved and a spectacle enjoyed by billions across the globe.

Sure, rugby has its madmen scattered across the globe such as Mourad Boudjellal, Toulon's trigger-happy owner. He fired four coaches in the last two years – Bernard Laporte, Diego Dominguez, Mike Ford and Richard Cockerill – before appointing Patrice Collazo into the Pro 14 giants' furnace. Boudjellal's approach has, in a weird and twisted way, brought him and the club success.

At the turn of the century Toulon were relegated to the French Second Division twice: once for getting into financial ruin in 2000 and the second time for winning three matches out of 26 in 2003. Since Boudjellal's takeover and cash flush, they did the three-peat of Heineken Cup victories between 2013 and 2015 and won the Top 14 in 2014 for the first time in 22 years. Not a bad return.

Rugby joined the professional party as late as the mid 1990s and in a quarter of a century it has begun its financial descent. And the main reasons for that are the amateur structure decisions that have held the sport back over the years.

For instance, if the Stormers' goal is to win Super Rugby each year, a coach whose team get defeated 60-21 at home in a knockout game should be fearing for his life. But not Fleck, who is riding the merry wave of amateur era administration and milking it to the core.

I hear a lot of people saying Fleck didn't appoint himself to the post of Stormers head coach. Nobody ever appoints themselves; not the CEO, not the president of the union, not the board members, not the director of rugby ... heck the players don't pick themselves either.

And as a result, Fleck has a gun to the Stormers' head because the franchise, which is 100% run by the amateur arm, Western Province Rugby Union (WPRU), does not have the funds to pay him out. This is in spite of the fact that his contract only has until October to run. Most of the management staff's contracts end in October, for that matter, meaning the Stormers only have to stomach 10 months of abject performances before there can be change.

I say it will cost the Stormers more in lost stadium revenue alone than it would to axe Fleck. His team is grossly underperforming and the most loyal fans in the world, the Newlands faithful, have voted with their feet. In 2017, the Stormers had the highest average stadium attendance record in the world at 28, 700 feet through the gate. (If an average ticket, excluding suites, costs R100 per person, that equals R2.8-million per game). Super Rugby attendance figures have declined by 20% since 2015, helped in no small part by coaches like Fleck bringing out teams like the Stormers every weekend.

Imagine that in a football environment. Imagine Real Madrid, the biggest club in the world, settling for poor performances for almost a year just to save a buck here and there. Florentino Pérez would have a hernia.

The Stormers, in fact rugby as a whole, aren't professional enough to put results ahead of ethos. Ethos doesn't pay bills. It's all good and well to want to give a coach time (And Fleck has had plenty of time) to instil his philosophy and all that good stuff but the quickest way to kill the game – and potential revenue – is to keep feeding fans with the same dry pap and millies rugby they are subjected to in Cape Town on a weekly basis in Super Rugby.

None of this is Fleck's fault, I hear you say? No it isn't. It's not his fault that the structure under which he works are so shambolic a 40-3 loss to arch rivals Bulls at Loftus does not result in heads rolling. It's not his fault that a Springbok-laden Stormers squad battles to coordinate a lineout, disintegrates at scrum time and defends like a bunch of kindergarten kids playing playground tag rugby.

The Stormers' financial woes aren't new but by appointing WPRU president Zelt Marais, who has an extensive financial background and has been part of the Stormers board for 12 years, to run the ship indicates a move to correct the books. A rising tide is supposed to lift all boats but not in the Cape apparently.

Instead, the director of rugby Gert Smal and CEO Paul Zacks play the fiddle while the Titanic sinks.

And Fleck being Fleck, he is happy with the dishonor of dragging a competitive franchise down. Last season he took them out of the playoffs for the first time in years. This season has already begun with the heaviest Stormers defeat at Loftus since the 75-14 humiliation of 2005.

As former Stormers and Springbok centre Gcobani Bobo said in the Bobescast: "If I'm Fleck, I'm not going to give up my salary." That says everything you need to know about Robbie Fleck and why he's in the position.

And it's only going to get worse. Star players such as Eben Etzebeth , Siya Kolisi, even Pieter-Steph du Toit, will position themselves for overseas moves after the World Cup, young as they still are. I doubt they see a future for themselves at that union beyond their contractual obligations.

Rudderless displays are the main course under Fleck. He cannot get the players to tune in mentally – evidenced by their failure to win a do-or-die match during his term. He is supposed to crack the whip but apparently he is telling wise cracks with the top brass that are keeping him in his position. And I'm not even going to touch of the media apologists who have rallied behind him, who are happy to nail Paul Treu to the cross instead.

It's surprising Treu wasn't blamed for what happened at Loftus. It's crazy. A vastly experienced coach like him frozen out because a drunk-on-ego head coach can't take his opinion being challenged by his own assistants. Crazy.

Treu knows the threats posed by Sevens geniuses such as Rosko "Specmagic" Speckman, Dylan Sage and the rest. But his opinion doesn't matter. Fleck, a glorified development coach who is well out of his depth, is hoisted up and gassed up so much that he believes in his own hype.

In Rassie Erasmus' hands the same players turn into world beaters. The same Bongi Mbonambi who misses his jumpers at Loftus does a 4/4 against France and scores the winning try to rescue an overseas tour. The same PSDT takes all his lineups, bull-dozes past defenders and looks for real like the South African Player of the Year. The same Siya Kolisi leads the Springboks to victory over the All Blacks in New Zealand for the first time in a decade. In Rassie's hands the players know they can win. In Fleck's hands they are already preparing for defeat.

For a long time everyone but Fleck has been blamed. The canteen staff are probably fearing for their minimum wages after the Loftus disaster. Maybe they put something in the food during the week. The bus ride to the stadium would get a public stoning, were it up to Fleck and the Marvel kits symbolically burnt, for they, not the coach, are to blame for the Stormers woes.

Escaping blame is the only skill Fleck's mastered in these woeful two-and-a-bit years in charge. Aside from a basic coaching course, Fleck needs to go on a leadership course. A leader is not someone who is never wrong, it's someone who explored the possibilities others might point out, with the aim to blend his or her knowledge to find the appropriate course of action. Pretty much the opposite of Fleck, who hasn't fostered an environment where opinions are challenged, either by leaders in the playing core or the management team.

In the picture above, General Stanley McChrystal is describing everything Fleck is not. The Stormers are not going to smell the Super Rugby trophy for at least another 10 years because that is how long it will take to undo all the damage the last three seasons have caused. But hey, don't listen to me. Listen to the disillusioned fans who are walking right out of Newlands and taking their hard-earned money elsewhere.

Sbu.

Twitter: @sbu_mjikeliso

IG: @dapper_author