What’s the South African influence on the Emergence of a Force?

Last year marked one of the most successful years for the Force since their arrival on the scene in 2006. How much of this success came from a recruitment policy favouring South African players and how sustainable is that going forward?

The early years were marred by the Firepower and Quokka throwing scandal and year after year of mediocrity. While the inaugural Force team boasted a number of players cherry picked from NSW and QLD, a couple of league players and Sydney club stalwarts (like Matt Hodgson) that couldn’t get a start elsewhere, in the middle years under the tutelage of John Mitchell and Richard Graham, teams had a distinct Kiwi flavour, but now, the Force seems to have directed its focus further west across the Indian Ocean.

Force captain Matt Hodgson

In their tenth season in the competition, could they have emerged as a finals team?

The emergence of the international market for players

What we are seeing in Rugby is the emergence of a truly international market for players (workforce). Rugby has long been an international game with players emigrating and playing for their adopted nation, but these days, in a highly paid marketplace, the movement seems more strategic and calculated. Players are being identified earlier and offered more, both in terms of salary and opportunities for education and betterment.

Getting players to move earlier can keep them eligible for the nation that they adopt. After just three years residence in a new country, a player becomes eligible to play for that nation. Henry Speight is probably the most recent and high profile example of this in Australia, but abroad, we’re also seeing the rather controversial emergence of a raft of South Africans in the French team. What seems to be happening in the west is the emergence of a new trend in Australian recruitment for players.

Henry Speight made his Wallaby debut in 2014 after becoming eligible

The African Strategy

Closer links between the Force and Africa appears to be a clear management decision. A number of things seem to have changed in WA in recent years including management, coaching, and players. However, unlike some Eastern states who might have a prevalence for Pacific Islanders and Kiwis, the Western Force have embraced a new strategic direction with strong African roots.

It’s an interesting strategy and one that may make sense, so let’s take a look at it:

1. Geographic

WA sits almost equidistant from New Zealand in the East, Japan to the North and South Africa to the West. There is no strong geographic reason why a link between Africa should occur.

2. Organic growth

Many propose that WA has much stronger links to South Africa than other countries because of the number of expats residing in the state. However, according to 2011 ABS statistics, by country of birth, South Africans (1.6%) rank fourth after New Zealand (3.2%), England (8.6%) and Australians (62.9%) in WA. This fact alone suggests that Kiwis and Poms also have a fair representation in WA. Although there are clear examples of African expat children coming through the WA ranks, it’s hard to make a strong link to Africa and exclude the influence of other nationalities.

3. Cost (Return on investment)

South African players can be cheaper than some Australian players at the lower levels due to the cheaper Rand, and the opportunities provided to them, but they’re on Australian wages once here, so it doesn’t seem likely. Australia does however, have many parallels to the South African economy through strong mining and agriculture, particularly in WA, where players may have good post rugby opportunities, so this may be appealing for the players themselves.

4. Quality and culture

While hard to measure either, there is no disputing the quality that Africa produces. According to one source, South Africa contains the second largest rugby playing population in the world after England, with three times the number of ‘senior males’ than Australia, so there is undoubtedly playing depth ready for export to Australia. In terms of culture, it’s hard to say, but what we haven’t seen or heard of is the likes of Schalk Burger, Bryan Habana or Morne Steyn at Burger King at 3am the night before a big test.

Bryan Habana – Quality South African player

Current links to Africa

From Australian rugby’s perspective, unlike the long history of players coming from the Pacific Islands, the emergence of closer links with Africa is a very new trend, and largely West Australian. This marks a departure from previous recruitment trends for Australian super teams, particularly the Force, who had around 25% of players with links to New Zealand in 2012.

In 2014, a guy by the name of Mickey Arthur was appointed to head up the ‘Future Force’ development program. While not involved in rugby related matters, Arthur says he is focused on “providing a holistic program – rugby, education and careers advice”, and undoubtedly he also has the ability to ‘open doors’ in his home and adopted country where he has coached both national cricket teams.

Mickey Arthur – Now the head of the ‘Future Force’ program

There is depth and quality in some of the talent emerging in the West that seems to predate Arthur’s arrival. The 2014 Australian under 20s team that contested the Junior World Cup contained no fewer than five West Australians which seems unprecedented. What is also interesting about these young lads is that at least two were born in Africa (and have come through the WA system).

These two youngsters are in the current squad and join ten other players in the current Force squad with links to Africa by birth or playing history, meaning one third of the total squad have such links. The closest comparison to this sort of trend is potentially the Waratahs or Reds links to the Pacific Islands. However, this seems to be closer to 20-25% of the total squad with players coming through the Australian systems rather than ‘off the shelf’ imports.

These numbers also exclude support staff, where Arthur is joined by the inaugural Perth Spirit coach, Dave Wessel’s and at least one Board member who have links to South Africa.

What does it mean for the Force…?

For the Force, importing talent is nothing new, but this new model linked to Africa may represent a far most sustainable model than directly importing players from the East Coast. This supply of players may be able to complement the emergence of West Australian players without undermining the Eastern States through ‘player drain’ to the west.

In addition, the ongoing recruitment of young players from South Africa looking for good opportunities outside their home nation may represent an opportunity, not only for the Force, but for the Wallabies. For the former, the results seem to be coming already, with an improved performance in 2014 coupled with making the final of the inaugural NRC championship.

Not only do the current internationals help the Force during the regular season, but they’re not playing international rugby, meaning they’re eligible for NRC and potentially playing less rugby, so they’re fresher. This benefit is similar to NRL teams recruiting Kiwi players who aren’t involved in Origin games.

David Pocock – A current player with African heritage

So, who exactly are we talking about? Although he’s no longer with the Force, the most notable current player with African heritage is David Pocock.

Sias Ebersohn (age 25) continues to be a fantastic buy for the Force and made a huge difference to their play in 2014, as did centre Marcel Brache (age 29) and the ever enthusiastic, Brynard Stander (age 24). Stander is a big, hardnosed back rower coming into his second year of super rugby and will be interesting to see if he can add to the Force’s backrow play with a bruising South African flavour.

Emerging Force players include Kyle Godwin (age 22) and Brad Lacey (age 21) – both of whom arrived in Australia as youngsters and are destined for Wallabies honours.

…and Australian Rugby

Hopefully, this ‘alliance’ becomes a great thing for Australian Rugby. For a long time, we’ve been accustomed to the Kiwi and Islander heritage in Australian teams, but a healthy link to Africa could be a great point of difference for the Western Force and the Wallabies. Unlike importing from the East Coast, the African strategy grows the talent pool rather than simply cherry picking other states players and keeping the pool the same size.

Remember this guy?

The current ARU rules allow the Force (and Rebels) to have one more foreign player than other franchises, which is supporting this trend. There should be no surprise then that this ‘deregulation’ has resulted in an improved Force showing.

What it should also do is help the existing Australian players improve since they’re now surrounded by quality players (like Sias Ebersohn) and that is helping the club to be competitive. In theory, if this sort of approach strengthens the Force and the Australian conference, then surely the Wallabies will reap the rewards, as more players (just like Henry Speight) nationalise and choose the Wallabies.

This strategy isn’t without precedent, with Clyde Rathbone and Dan Vickerman being the two most successful South African exports to represent the Wallabies. Just like France, Australia could easily see some of these players playing for Australia in coming years, and in our case, this could add much needed and complementary skills to our repertoire.

If the ARU were intelligent about it, they should be endorsing the strategy, but coming up with a way to try and fill the gaps and weaknesses such as scrummaging and tough, uncompromising second and back rowers.