The day to day running of the Isuzu Southern Kings is now in the hands of board members Loyiso Dotwana and Rory Stear, and a decision to appoint a permanent chief executive officer has been put on hold.
The vacancy at the Kings opened after chief operating officer Charl Crous accepted an appointment to work for Guinness PRO14 in Ireland as head of operations from June.
“It was decided at our first board meeting that we have the approval to appoint a new chief executive officer,” Dotwana said.
“We have decided not to rush this. We want to thoroughly review all potential candidates to ensure we make the right appointment.
“In the meantime, as an interim measure, Rory Stear and I will roll up our sleeves and get involved in some of the day to day operations of the franchise.
“This is to provide the focus needed to implement the required changes. Ultimately we want to create an environment that will attract the best chief executive officer.
“We are taking over a franchise that was run by SA Rugby out of Tygerberg in Cape Town. So there is lot of work that we still need to do to put the systems in place to run the franchise.”
“Charl’s appointment bodes well, because he fully understands our franchise. He has been a tremendous asset over the years and I want to wish him everything of the best in Dublin," Dotwana said.
Earlier this month SA Rugby announced hat they had sold a 74% shareholding in SA Super Rugby (Pty) Ltd, the Isuzu Southern Kings’ holding company, to a company called The Greatest Rugby Company in the Whole Wide World (Pty) Ltd (GRC). The full Kings board is Dotwana (The Greatest Rugby Company in the Whole Wide World, chair), Stear (GRC, deputy chair), Kenny Govender (GRC), Gary Markson (GRC), Bantwini Matika (EP Rugby Union), Shaheed Patel (EP Rugby Union), Michael Sacke (Isuzu Motors SA, independent director), Gugu Nxiweni (Improvate Group independent director). EP Rugby president Andre Rademan has a standing invitation to attend meetings.
Dotwana said that one of the key objectives of the franchise was to improve on-field results.
“While the Kings have shown a gradual improvement in the current season versus the inaugural season, we want to ensure that we win at least half of the fixtures from next season.
“We expect next season to be very different. Just like in business, we are also ambitious with the results that we expect on the field. The ground work to ensure that we achieve our targets is already underway for the season,” he said.
“We will be doing everything possible to source the best possible talent to strengthen the core base of the team. This will be balanced up with high potential local talent players within the current team and also other emerging players.”
Dotwana said it is important that the Eastern Cape gets a team which it can rally behind.
“There is no other province which has the vast number of rugby playing schools that we have to source talent from. Too often our talent leaves for other parts of the country and globe. We want to change that by making the Kings a team that rugby players aspire to be a part of.”