SA Rugby boss reveals the one lesson they’ve learned from Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series

Mark Alexander has admitted that having midweek games during the All Blacks’ tour of South African tour has not been a success and is something which organisers “should look at”.

New Zealand are currently preparing to take on the Springboks in the first Test of Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series at Ellis Park in Johannesburg on Saturday.

That venue will also host their match against the Lions next Tuesday before Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series heads to Cape Town where the second Test will be held at the DHL Stadium on August 29.

Apart from their upcoming clash with the Lions, Dave Rennie’s troops have already faced South Africa’s three other United Rugby Championship (URC) outfits the Stormers, Sharks and Bulls.

The matches against the Stormers and Bulls were played on weekends in front of relatively big crowds in Cape Town and Pretoria respectively but there were much less spectators in attendance when the All Blacks faced the Sharks in a midweek game in Durban and the same is expected when they face the Lions.

And Alexander believes that having a relook at the concept of midweek games is one of the few lessons which they have learned during New Zealand’s Greatest Rivalry tour.

Mid-week games must be looked at

“I think one of the things that we should look at is not having midweek games, especially for Gauteng and Durban,” he said at the unveiling of Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry trophy in Johannesburg.

“The midweek games don’t work. The weekend games seem to have done well, both the weekend games.”

Alexander also believes that SA Rugby missed a trick by not selecting combined teams to take on the All Blacks on their tour.

“Also, maybe look at playing picked teams, like an SA ‘A’ team and an SA Country team,” he explained.

“Having teams like the teams playing in the SA Cup, a picked team, giving those boys a chance. It’s about creating opportunities. It’s about pathways and I think we need to create those pathways for the guys who don’t have the opportunity to play at this level.”

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Despite the disappointment of the midweek matches, Alexander is happy that there is still plenty of interest in the upcoming Test series between South Africa and New Zealand.

Test series almost sold out

“No, I think we knew that we were not going to attract big crowds to the provincial Games, especially on Tuesday nights,” he said. “But the Test series is where we looked at and that’s where it sold out.

“We’ve got some seats left at FNB (Stadium), but we’re excited about the series. We’ve got a lot of visitors. I think the country must be excited because the economic impact for this event to the country, direct and indirect, is about ZAR 6.8b (c.GBP 309m).

“So they’re the biggest beneficiaries of this and I’m excited about that.”

Apart from a hard-fought win against the Stormers, the All Blacks clinched comfortable victories over the Sharks and Bulls and it won’t be a surprise if they registered a similar result against the Lions on Tuesday.

Alexander bemoaned the fact that the South African URC teams are in the middle of their pre-season preparations which meant they were far from their best in those clashes with the All Blacks.

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Earlier this year, he urged rugby’s bigwigs to come to an agreement regarding a unified global calendar and repeated that plea.

“It hasn’t been ideal, but again, I don’t want to harp on the global season,” he said. “We need to sort our seasons out and we’ll always have this challenge until we can find a global season.

“But I think with the Nations Championship, we have a group of 12 countries. I think we’ll find a solution there.

“I think we’ll be foolish if we don’t find a season that works for all of rugby. Because if we don’t find each other, somebody else will start another league and the players will be playing elsewhere.”

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