Letter: Group out to derail rugby union

Vote of no confidence mooted

THE EP Rugby Union’s tumultuous affairs have for some time now been characterised as being caused by the executive’s incompetence and irresponsibility. This sentiment is shared by those who within various quarters of the union have embarked on a mission deliberately and vociferously to destabilise it for their selfish, narcissistic and myopic gains.

It is with pleasure that through this piece I seek to repudiate this deplorable sentiment with contempt and to portray the unbecoming character of those who go to great lengths to subvert the current union leadership. It is important to understand that this so-called “executive incompetence” is something which was and still is manufactured by disgruntled cohorts.

Some of us have for a while now understood that this painstaking campaign to oust Cheeky Watson and his executive commenced immediately after their (those who voted against Watson) preferred candidate lost the previous election to him. These people’s campaign has now gained impetus from the widely known cash flow problems that our (those who voted for Watson) beloved union is going through.

It is imperative that we identify these people as disgruntled members of the union because the public must know that they are in the minority and that their views cannot be thought of as the dominant views within the union. This farcical sentiment of incompetence is therefore ceaselessly sustained through misrepresentation, and the alleged deliberate divulgence of untruths about the activities and or governance of the union.

These people masquerade as official spokespeople of the union, but meanwhile they continue to give an obscured view of the current status of the union. Upon disrupting the very same meetings that they have called for in which they wanted to discuss the removal of Cheeky and other issues, they will subsequently host press briefings in which they will claim to have been victimised and/or denied several of their rights.

When they relinquish almost all procedural ethics in a meeting in favour of anarchy, the chairperson on the day will have to reprimand not only them but all those who are out of order. It is often when this happens that they claim that their rights have been curbed, which it is utter nonsense, to say the least.

Thus, their heavy reliance on disruption during the union committee meetings makes it highly impossible to conclude discussion on glaringly pertinent matters. This also deprives the executive of the time it needs to elucidate on pertinent issues that face the union daily.

This group have in their attempts to overthrow the current leadership shown us that they suffer from a constipation of ideas. This group sought to generate a petition to establish the number of clubs in support of the “vote of no confidence” issue prior to it being discussed in a special general meeting that they requested.

Before the meeting was sanctioned they submitted that petition along with various items which they wanted to be discussed at the special general meeting. In that petition there were several signatories from various clubs who were purported to be in support of the motion of “vote of no confidence” in Watson and the executive.

On the eve of the meeting several clubs whose names and signatories were in the petition submitted their withdrawal letters to EPRU claiming that they had no knowledge of the merits of the petition and that they were not fully briefed. This was communicated to the group during the special general meeting, thus their motion was constitutionally demolished.

These are people who are brazen in their attempt to disorganise and render this beloved union ungovernable. These are people who do not care about the casualties along the way, the biggest of which is the union itself.

These are people who do not think about the sustainability of this union even well beyond Watson’s era. We will always support an officially elected structure until it has been democratically removed and replaced by genuine, reliable, law-abiding and screened members of the union.