Basson reaches out to concerned clubs

THE president of the Namibia Rugby Union (NRU), Bradley Basson, who was elected for another two-year term at the NRU’s annual general meeting on Saturday has reached out to concerned clubs, saying that they need to make a collective effort to resolve their differences.

Saturday’s AGM reportedly ended in discontent when representatives of several clubs walked out before the election, due to numerous issues, with the result that new board members were elected unopposed.

Basson said he had held a meeting with the representative of the concerned clubs, Corrie Mensah as well as a representative of African rugby, Mervin Green on Monday to discuss some of the grievances of the clubs.

Although no formal decisions were taken, the meeting was ‘very positive’ and Basson said he would extend invitations to all clubs to attend a workshop during which shortcomings of the NRU’s constitution and other grievances could be addressed.

One of the clubs’ grievances, that was also raised by Basson in his annual President’s Report, was the absence of some council members at the AGM, who in stead provided proxies for other members to vote on their behalf.

According to a report in Die Republikein, some of the proxies were declared invalid at the AGM, while Wanderers’ chairman Flip Louw had proxies for five other clubs besides his own.

Basson raised several other issues of concern in his President’s Report, saying that their development grant from World Rugby could be reduced due to the fact that their 2015 development budget was under-utilised while the number of children involved in the NRU’s ‘Get into Rugby’ programme had fallen drastically from previous years.

“Our development budget was under-utilised and they almost penalised us, but our World Cup preparations also hampered that. The NRU grant for 2016 was reduced but we managed to convince World Rugby to pay the NRU the monies not spent during 2015. To this extent, whilst there will be little impact on our development grant for 2016, we run the risk of having our grant decreased if no improvement is seen in this area for 2016,” he said.

Basson said 2015 was a very successful year for the national team, during which they beat Russia for the first time, while they also gave competitive performances against New Zealand, Tonga, Georgia and Argentina at the Rugby World Cup. Namibia secured its first-ever World Cup point in a narrow 17-16 defeat to Georgia, while Namibia also achieved its best losing margins against its opponents in the group phase.

He thanked all the national team’s sponsors but expressed concern about a lack of sponsors for the domestic leagues.

“Whilst we managed to fund all our national teams in their respective competitions, it remains a challenge to secure sponsorship for our domestic club leagues,” he said.

Basson said he attended the general assembly of World Rugby in November last year where a lot of positive changes were implemented which could also benefit Namibia.

“Namibia Rugby now has the opportunity to get a seat on the World Rugby Council provided that we satisfy the criteria laid down. This, I respectfully submit is a chance that we should grab as it provides us with the platform to give our input directly at the highest level of World Rugby, which will ultimately result in growing our game,” he said.

The new board members who were elected at the NRU’s AGM are Petrie Theron as vice president – governance, a position formerly held by Danie Strauss; Ivan Gaya – vice president – rugby; and Winton van der Westhuizen – Erongo representative.

The rest of the NRU board remains the same and consists of the following members:

Bradley Basson – president; Hans Hashagen – specialist appointment: finance; advocate Louis Botes – specialist appointment: legal; Corné Powell – Namibia Rugby Players Association representative; Jacky Husselmann – Namibia Rugby Referee Society representative;  Abie van Wyk – Namibia Secondary Schools Rugby representative; and Randall Louw and Thomas Mbeeli – Central representatives.

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