Rugby needs football-like transfer system says SA Rugby boss

Rugby union’s future might depend on adopting a transfer system more akin to football- that’s according to SA Rugby chief executive Rian Oberholzer.

Speaking on the latest episode of To The Last Drop, Oberholzer claims there is a critical need for domestic clubs to financially benefit from developing players, given the ongoing outflow of talent to international leagues.

Oberholzer noted that hundreds of South African players depart each year for contracts in the United States, Europe, Japan, Australasia, and even Russia. This drain, he argued, places an unsustainable strain on South African rugby’s talent development, a sector that currently yields minimal return on investment for clubs as players leave the country.

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The veteran administrator also provided insights into South Africa’s potential competition structure, suggesting that the nation cannot afford to maintain only four professional teams.

“We must be careful not to think that we can only have four professional teams in South Africa. The player drain will be so much bigger,” stated Oberholzer.

“We already have a huge outflow of players [from South Africa] into America. If you do your homework there, there’s nearly 100 players playing there in America. There’s a hell of a lot of players playing in France, in the second division and even the third division and now players are in Russia as well.

“Because of our talent pool and massive community structures, we produce a lot of players who want to play and see themselves as professionals. Can we put a structure in place where we can accommodate a majority of them? I think yes. I think we have to look at the number of professional players we have, we have to look at the salaries and the salary caps.

“A very important part of professionalism that we have not really grasped in rugby yet is the transfer system… where clubs get compensated for the development of players and when you want to buy my player, can you transfer them, so a player becomes an asset as opposed to a liability.

“At this moment in teams players are liabilities in South Africa in rugby, not assets. The quicker we can have a proper transfer system in place – similar to what they do in football for example – the quicker we will resolve a lot of our other problems.

“The players who go from a smaller union and move to a big union and there’s no compensation for the smaller union. And for South African teams that [have] South African players that get contracted to international teams in France and Japan, for example, and the local provinces get no compensation for that.

“I think those are the type of issues we still grapple with twenty years [30] after professional,” said Oberholzer.

Presenters Brenden Nel and Liam Del Carme questioned Oberholzer on various pressing issues, including SA Rugby’s proposed equity deal with the Ackerley Sports Group (ASG). Oberholzer also emphasized the importance of this equity agreement to stabilize the game’s financial foundation, pointing to ASG as the preferred bidder due to its solid proposal.