Eastern Province must earn the right to play in the Currie Cup Premier Division again, writes SIMON BORCHARDT.
Eastern Province’s hopes of competing in the top tier of next year’s Currie Cup were dashed this past Friday when eight provincial unions voted against the motion at SA Rugby’s general council meeting.
Five of those were the other Currie Cup First Division unions that also have Premier Division ambitions. The three non-international franchises (as SA Rugby calls them) – the Cheetahs, Pumas and Griquas – also voted against the motion, with only the Vodacom Bulls, Lions and Sharks supporting it. (Border and Western Province, who have been placed under administration by SA Rugby, were not allowed to vote.)
However, a motion was approved to automatically promote the top South African team in the First Division to the Premier Division at the end of 2022, creating an eight-team Premier Division in 2023. The promoted team will be entrenched for two seasons (until the end of the 2024 Currie Cup season) when the bottom team in the Premier Division will be automatically relegated in favour of the top First Division team. The latter will again be guaranteed a place in the Premier Division for two seasons before promotion-relegation occurs at the end of the 2026 season.
When pushing their cause for Premier Division inclusion in 2022, EP would have highlighted the fact that the Eastern Cape produces the vast majority of South Africa’s black African players and therefore needs a team at the top domestic table, especially after the demise of the Kings’ PRO14 franchise. Premier Division inclusion would also have resulted in an extra R7 million in annual funding for EP, which would have been used to strengthen their squad.
However, promoting EP to the Premier Division now would have been grossly unfair on the other First Division teams. In 2021, the Leopards, Griffons, Valke and Boland all finished above EP – who won just two of their six matches – on the log, with the Leopards going on to beat the Griffons in the final. If the Premier Division were to be expanded to eight teams in 2022, then it’s the Leopards who are first in line based on performance.
The Elephants’ recent results have not been pretty.
There was great optimism in Gqeberha when former Springbok coach Peter de Villiers was appointed EP coach in December 2020. But that quickly evaporated when an EP team made up of local club players was hammered in the 2021 Preparation Series by the Bulls (87-10), Lions (54-24), Griquas (43-0) and Cheetahs (71-12). They weren’t much better in the First Division, suffering big defeats by the Leopards (50-29), Griffons (41-3), Border (41-20) and Valke (39-23).
In September, De Villiers abruptly left EP with three months remaining on his contract to become the Good party’s mayoral candidate for the Drakenstein municipality. He said he had received no communication from the EPRU to assure him of his future and was therefore “done with rugby”.
In November, EP unveiled former Border coach Dumisani Mhani as De Villiers’ replacement.
“EP is a sleeping giant that needs to be awakened,” said Mhani, who later named a 32-man provisional Currie Cup training squad consisting of local club players.
However, that giant is not going to be given a free ride into the Premier Division. EP will have to earn that right by winning the First Division title, which they haven’t done since 2012.
Based on EP’s performances in 2021, that is unlikely to happen any time soon, and without the extra funding they needed to sign players from outside the region, Mhani will have to make do with local talent.
The coach says he plans to work closely with club and school coaches in a bid to identify that talent and keep it in the region. The latter, though, will depend on whether EP can get back into the Premier Division, and then stay there.
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Photo: Sydney Seshibedi/Gallo Images
