Playing name games has become a favourite pastime for Eastern Cape rugby officials and investors over the past few weeks.
First the EP Rugby Union put their plans to change the name of the Southern Kings on ice after running into opposition. If they had pressed ahead with those plans we could have been talking about the Mandela Bay Gladiators today.
Not to be outdone, the potential new owners of the Kings have taken the name game to whole new level.
If the Kings display only a fraction of the confidence of their likely new owners they will win more games than they lose this season.
So just how did the consortium which is bidding for a 74% stake in the Guinness PRO14 side come up with the name “The Greatest Rugby Company in the Whole World”?
Businessman Rory Stear, one of the consortium’s five members, said the group had considered a few options before finally settling on a name.
“We were struggling to come up with a suitable name for the new company and had tried a wide variety of names that included the word ‘Invictus’. All of which were rejected by the authorities,” Stear said.
“A friend of mine has his assets in a similarly named company and the name had always amused me. So I suggested it and was surprised when my partners also thought it was amusing and went with it.”
Rugby has changed now that business people are involved.
Though the deal has yet to be ratified, it is thought this will be a formality when the SA Rugby executive committee next meet.
Words like “incremental” are now being thrown around.
Incremental is normally associated with tax or interest rates, but it was quite natural for consortium chair Loyiso Dotwana to use it when he discussed his team.
Sports people, well most of them, don’t use worlds like that.
Dotwana works in the engineering and construction industry and the four other members of his consortium who want control of the Kings represent different sectors of business.
“We want to build a professional and competitive team for the long run,” Dotwana said.
“Our long-term ambition is to achieve incremental growth which, ultimately, will result in the Kings winning the PRO14 Championship.
Only two weeks ago, it would have been laughable to talk about the Kings winning the PRO14, but with the resources of Isuzu and a business consortium backing them anything is possible.
The Kings, under ambitious captain Michael Willemse, started their PRO14 campaign against Zebre in Italy on Friday.
This is where the word incremental comes in again.
The new backers are not expecting to shoot the lights out either this or next season.
In the end, the owners and sponsors will want to raise the standard of all teams in the region, including the EP junior and senior teams.
Getting the Kings on the winning track will be tough, but resurrecting the fortunes of EP’s Currie Cup sides could be even tougher.
EP stumbled to a new low when their senior and two junior Currie Cup teams leaked 256 points in a bloodbath last weekend.
It was open season on all EP’s Elephant teams with their seniors and juniors being hunted down by their opposition.
The Elephants U21 side were hammered 120-0 by the Lions and the EP U19 team went down 66-5 to the visitors from Johannesburg.
On Saturday, the slaughter RORY STEAR
continued when the Elephants senior team were culled 70-12 by a rampant Boland Cavaliers side.
Before the action, a wary EP president Andre Rademan had said things had not been looking good for his teams because they were fielding club players against professionals.
He remained adamant, however, that EP would fulfil all their fixtures, despite the problems his union were enduring.
One must wonder whether Rademan and his executive will have a rethink after the latest round of heavy defeats.
This is where the new sponsors and owners come in.
A successful academy would provide answers to many of the problems in the region.
It must be top of their list if they are to achieve the incremental growth they crave.
Hopefully the Greatest Rugby Company in the Whole World will live up to its name.