SA Rugby to fast-track development of elite black coaches

In a bold step to fast-track the development South Africa’s elite black rugby coaches and drive transformation, SA Rugby has been actively presenting its custom-made programme to equip outstanding emerging coaches with the skills to ply their trade at provincial and international level.

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SA Rugby director of rugby Rassie Erasmus and Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber last week presented the latest masterclass in a course series designed for the participants over the past few months.

A total of 101 nominations were received from the country’s provincial unions late last year for the programme, which is fully funded by the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture (DSAC) and has been in the development phase for two years.

After an intense review and interview process, the group of selected coaches was narrowed down to 32, with 18 of them being hand-picked for the inaugural year of the programme in 2022.

The participants include SA Women’s U20 coach and Western Province Women’s head coach Laurian Johannes-Haupt, SA Sevens Academy head coach Sandile Ngcobo, Vodacom Bulls defence coach Joey Mongalo, as well as Stormers and Sharks skills coaches Labeeb Levy and Phiwe Nomlomo.

The other 14 coaches, meanwhile, have been participating in a development programme which includes working with an industrial psychologist to equip them to follow in the footsteps of their counterparts in future.

“This programme marks a big step for SA Rugby to fast-track the development of our top up-and-coming black coaches and to achieve our coaching transformation goals,” said SA Rugby president Mark Alexander.

“Our vision with this custom-made SA Rugby programme has been to bolster the standing of these coaches within the high-performance structures throughout the country with an eye on equipping them to coach at provincial and international level.

“The process to select the final group of 18 coaches was rigorous and an intense few months of learning has been planned for them.

“Each one of these individuals showed that they have the potential to become elite coaches.”

Erasmus said: “Over the years we have seen a number of black coaches with the potential fail to receive opportunities to coach at the highest level, which includes the Currie Cup and Vodacom United Rugby Championship, and unfortunately very few have made their way through the ranks.

“This triggered the need to take this process out of the hands of the franchises and take action as SA Rugby.

“This is the first of its kind in South Africa, so we know it will take hard work behind the scenes and that we’ll have to learn and adapt along the way, but it was vital to create a system that allows us to simulate that high-pressure coaching environment and bridge the gap to speed up the process where our most talented black, up-and-coming coaches can advance to the top rugby structures at the elite level of the game.

“It was an absolute pleasure for Jacques and I to present a coaching class to close to 100 participants last week and, I must admit, it is has been enlightening to learn from their experiences as well.

“The coaches who are not part of the final 15 have still been involved in the programme albeit via a different path, but this is a very exciting initiative, and we have a very competent team, which includes our Springbok and Springbok Women’s coaches who have been involved hands-on throughout the programme.”

The objectives of the coaching programme include developing them to flourish in high-performance and high-pressure environments, and include vital factors such as personal mastery, situational competence and dexterity, building mental strength and building media competence in an environment with numerous simultaneous challenges.

The participants have also had several ‘coaching masterclasses’ touching on coaching in a high-performance environment, organisational learning and the evolution and understanding of humanity within a team set-up.

The course runs until December and the participants will be required to submit assignments throughout the year in addition to attending several information sessions and masterclasses.

SA Rugby Elite coaching development participants: