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Springboks coach Allister Coetzee has been sacked

wow. with rassie taking over you gotta ask why did they bother appointing a coloured coach in the first place?
gotta agree with Coetzee that he was setup to fail. imo the quota killed his job
 
mania said:
wow. with rassie taking over you gotta ask why did they bother appointing a coloured coach in the first place?
gotta agree with Coetzee that he was setup to fail. imo the quota killed his job
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It definitely didn't help but I don't think you can say that it killed it. For example; the repeated selection of de Allande (white) over RJVR (white) and others like that can't be blamed on quota, that's just poor selection.
 
TobyBeastTeague said:
It definitely didn't help but I don't think you can say that it killed it. For example; the repeated selection of de Allande (white) over RJVR (white) and others like that can't be blamed on quota, that's just poor selection.
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Coetzee wasn't the only selector tho?
This is the harshest quota to date. No other boks coach has been under these restraints
IMO he never had any freedom to do it how he wanted.
 
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No doubt there is blame to go around, but AC has to take responsibility for some of his woeful performances.
Even if you take quota's into account (and honestly if you look at the sides he's selected there have been very few impactful quota selections), we should be delivering the kind of performances we have been over the past 2 years.

It's pretty clear AC was out of his depth at this level and incapable of motivating and orchestrating an international team like the Bokke.
Now he's going to ring SARU for every penny he can and I suppose that's his right, why there was no performance clause in his contract is beyond me.

It's going to be a very bumpy road before the Springbok's dig themselves out of this hole they've dug.

Any change is probably good though, it's hard to imagine us getting any worse than we have been recently, I get the feeling Rassie is only a "holding coach" and will probably only be head coach until 2019, where he will appoint someone new and take up his position of director of rugby.
 
mania said:
wow. with rassie taking over you gotta ask why did they bother appointing a coloured coach in the first place?
gotta agree with Coetzee that he was setup to fail. imo the quota killed his job
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Really?

For me this is sour grapes from Coetzee.

Question 1: Why did he accept the job at the time it was available? He wanted the job, he knew what he was getting himself into.

Question 2: He did actually play a part in the selection of the coaching staff. Matthew Proudfoot is the prime example. He was AC's right hand man at the Stormers and now with the Springboks.

Question 3: The timing of the letter seems a bit odd. Why wasn't this letter sent in December immediately after they didn't do the performance review??

Question 4: Talking about the Performance Review, Why did he agree to the terms in the first place? There's a clause in his contract that he must obtain a certain winning percentage (I think it's 65%) and at the moment he's the lowest percentage winning margin of any Springbok coach. If this was football he'd be sacked and that would be the end of the story.

Question 5: Why would he want to stay on as a ceremonial coach? And would SARU really be interested in keeping him as a ceremonial coach after this letter? My guess is that he wants his job as it is now, or nothing. But we all know that it won't be possible as Rassie will still be his boss...

Tigs Man said:
This might make it harder to keep RJVR in UK next season.
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Is there a deal in place for him for next season? I know he's coming back to SA for the Super Rugby season. But I didn't know he'll return to Sale...
 
He had to go. It's a fairly ordinary set of players he had to rebuild with but there was no sign of progress - at all. The capitulations to Ireland and Wales were unacceptable. On two points I agree with AC:

i) if he got the Stormers to a Super Rugby semi-final then arguably he was a reasonably well qualified coach given the other options.

ii) the stories about poor quality support coaches in his first year (due to a lack of funding) were well documented and appear genuine.

But he got better support coaches in his second year, got his indaba / Conference thing and went nowhere. He seemed to wilfully refuse to marry up tactics to the more open play that clearly seems to have been agreed for Super Rugby teams. He completely squandered the momentum gained in the France series when they scored 30+ points in three games against a miserly defence with more ambitious play. He turned his back on that style more with each passing game.

Total chaos for the Boks to have a temp coach in Rassie who will presumably stand aside less than a year out from the RWC? Hope they can find some way to lure Ackerman back as he is the standout option now.
 
South Africa will be in good hands. Our Welsh S&C man Aled will be the integral part of the jigsaw
 
Bruce_ma_goose said:
He had to go. It's a fairly ordinary set of players he had to rebuild with but there was no sign of progress - at all. The capitulations to Ireland and Wales were unacceptable. On two points I agree with AC:

i) if he got the Stormers to a Super Rugby semi-final then arguably he was a reasonably well qualified coach given the other options.

ii) the stories about poor quality support coaches in his first year (due to a lack of funding) were well documented and appear genuine.

But he got better support coaches in his second year, got his indaba / Conference thing and went nowhere. He seemed to wilfully refuse to marry up tactics to the more open play that clearly seems to have been agreed for Super Rugby teams. He completely squandered the momentum gained in the France series when they scored 30+ points in three games against a miserly defence with more ambitious play. He turned his back on that style more with each passing game.

Total chaos for the Boks to have a temp coach in Rassie who will presumably stand aside less than a year out from the RWC? Hope they can find some way to lure Ackerman back as he is the standout option now.
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The thing is, that to coach international rugby is a bit of a step up from Super Rugby. And AC's only contribution towards international rugby, was being assistant coach to Jake White when he was the Springbok coach.

He was qualified yes, but the playing style he had with the Stormers and the one he used for the Springboks didn't match up, and while he was good with the Stormers, he always seemed to lose out on trophies. And that to me, is a sign that he's not polished. And that came back to bite him on the international scene.

As for the assistant coaching. He had an input about who was hired, he can't now come and say that SARU employed below standard people.

Yes the funding did take a toll on what SARU could do to assist AC, But then again, Heyneke Meyer also had to feel that pinch, and made the best of the situation.

My understanding is that if Rassie takes over as head coach, he will remain the head coach until after the RWC.
 
A huge part of me wants to be sympathetic with AC and I want the Boks to have continuity at the coach position. But man, what is this letter?

I was fired from a job once and wanted to write a scaving letter to my former employers because it would make me feel better. NO WAY DID I ACTUALLY DO IT.

Could this letter be fake? Is that part of the SARU drama?

Anyway, it's going to take SARU and the Boks a longtime to recover from this.
 
AM_Bokke said:
A huge part of me wants to be sympathetic with AC and I want the Boks to have continuity at the coach position. But man, what is this letter?

I was fired from a job once and wanted to write a scaving letter to my former employers because it would make me feel better. NO WAY DID I ACTUALLY DO IT.

Could this letter be fake? Is that part of the SARU drama?

Anyway, it's going to take SARU and the Boks a longtime to recover from this.
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I highly doubt that it's fake. Because if it was, I'm sure AC and his attorneys would have blocked it from being circulated any further.

I think this letter is very real. And the parts we are reading are just the tip of the iceberg. I think the 16-page attack on SARU is much worse that just these few parts.

But the question I'm asking myself is what is AC trying to accomplish here?? Does he want to take this to the CCMA? If so, then the adjudicator will ask how they want this resolved? Do they want to rehire AC with the same terms as he had? Do they want to rehire him with different terms? Or do they want to terminate the contract without rehire. Now from what I read so far, I can't see SARU being sympathetic to AC anymore. So he basically made the choice for them...
 
mania said:
and i remember people saying very similar things about meyer during his tenure.
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Exactly.

But this letter to SARU is now headline news here in SA, and everyday a little bit more are being revealed. Latest article have this part in it:

Coetzee starts the comparison by reminding that, unlike Meyer, he was "not allowed own management team … only Matt Proudfoot" and was hamstrung by the presence for varying lengths of time of "four different defence coaches" (Jacques Nienaber, Chean Roux, JP Ferreira and Brendan Venter).

He claims he had no specialist breakdown consultant, whereas his immediate predecessor did, and only one "analyst" to Meyer's two.

The incumbent says Meyer enjoyed the services of more than one psychologist, as opposed to his own "seven days" of usage of one.

Coetzee also says the services of a massage therapist were "discontinued" during his tenure, after being available more consistently to Meyer.

For further ammunition to his cost-cutting claims, Coetzee also reminds that the Springboks "flew economy (class) for the first time, 18 hours to Dublin, via Doha", for the latest end-of-year-tour.

He says SARU, in another first, "compelled management team members" – though it is not clear if it included himself – to share hotel rooms.
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https://www.sport24.co.za/Rugby/Springboks/that-letter-penny-pinching-irked-allister-20180130

Now I don't want to rain on AC's parade here, but with regard to the defence coaches, JP Ferreira and Brendan Venter were asked to help AC as consultants because it appeared that AC and his team wasn't getting the job done. It's also extremely unfair to make SARU the bad guy with regard to Nienaber and Roux, as they got jobs somewhere else which were more to their liking. That's just part of the business sector.

No specialist breakdown consultant?? HM only got Richie Gray in to assist ahead of the World Cup, I'm sure SARU would have helped out just ahead of the 2019 World Cup...

I'm not going to get involved with the psychology one, because to me that's a bit of a stupid statement in the first place.

Massage therapist?? For who? The players or the coach? Does she give happy endings too?? Surely the players need the services of a physiotherapist who does massages too...

Flew economy class. Again, AC clutching at straws. He's completely forgetting that the South African Airways have so much problems with regard to loss of funding and corruption allegations, that at the time when the Springboks were supposed to fly to Ireland, the SAA's fleet was grounded, and SARU had to make a lst minute plan to get the guys to europe. Now I'm no flightplanner, but to have a group of 40+ people on a plane won't give all of them first class/ business class privilages.

As for guys to share hotel rooms. Why moan about that?? Surely that's a good bonding experience for everyone. And why is nobody else complaining about that...

The more news about this, the angrier I'm getting at AC. I like the guy, but this is not the way to bow out...
 
Politics and rugby are inexorably linked in South Africa.
The problem with AC's narrative is that every coach in the last 10 years or so has had to deal with these problems, specifically player migration and quotas and they've managed to not lose as many games as AC.

AC wasn't even particularly progressive in his selections, players like Gelant/Mampimpi/AM all had the public screaming for their names and he basically failed to select them during his tenure, and he did turn to overseas based players at times (Flouw/Vermulen). If he had pushed the transformation objective harder maybe he could use it as an excuse, but he really didn't - I didn't think the Bok team over the last 2 years or so has been particularly "transformed" not more so than Meyer's Boks anyway.

He was operating under political restrictions sure, maybe those restrictions were slightly worse under his tenure than previous ones (although I have my doubts) but that still doesn't justify his results, he has to take some responsibility which he isn't at all, you can't tell me AC had nothing to do with our results over the past 2 years, that's nonsense. He's just making any excuses to A) leverage his career in the future, or B ) get as big a pay out as he can.
 
SomeOke said:
Politics and rugby are inexorably linked in South Africa.
The problem with AC's narrative is that every coach in the last 10 years or so has had to deal with these problems, specifically player migration and quotas and they've managed to not lose as many games as AC.

AC wasn't even particularly progressive in his selections, players like Gelant/Mampimpi/AM all had the public screaming for their names and he basically failed to select them during his tenure, and he did turn to overseas based players at times (Flouw/Vermulen). If he had pushed the transformation objective harder maybe he could use it as an excuse, but he really didn't - I didn't think the Bok team over the last 2 years or so has been particularly "transformed" not more so than Meyer's Boks anyway.

He was operating under political restrictions sure, maybe those restrictions were slightly worse under his tenure than previous ones (although I have my doubts) but that still doesn't justify his results, he has to take some responsibility which he isn't at all, you can't tell me AC had nothing to do with our results over the past 2 years, that's nonsense. He's just making any excuses to A) leverage his career in the future, or B ) get as big a pay out as he can.
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Well I think this rant won't help him at all with the points you raised here.

To leverage his career in future, he should've shut up and not rant about his employer. All that it has done is to tarnish his reputation, and making other employers notice what they could expect should they employ him.

Get as big a payout, he should've done the same as what HM did and do the termination behind closed doors.
 

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