Stormers fans support their team inside Cape Town Stadium. Photo: Jaco Marais.
SA Rugby has provided a detailed recap of events in light of a planned protest against the administration of WP Rugby.
Stormers fans support their team inside Cape Town Stadium. Photo: Jaco Marais.
It had come to light this week that some Western Province affiliates were planning to protest against the SA Rugby-led administration of the WP Rugby union and franchise. This protest was expected to take place just before the URC game between the Stormers and Sharks at Cape Town Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
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However, SA Rugby have now sought to clarify matters and seemingly guard against this threat.
SA Rugby has noted plans to picket a forthcoming DHL Stormers match by elements of the Western Province Rugby Football Union (WPRFU) club structures and wishes to remind the rugby community of certain facts. It is felt necessary to do so at this time to remind the public of the calamitous sequence of actions and inactions by the former executive that led to the WPRFU being reluctantly taken into administration.
The remit of the administrator was to return the WPRFU to financial stability, while untangling the legal complications of the myriad of putative property deals that the former administration contemplated.
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The claims now being made by individuals – some of whom were part of the executive which traded the entity to the brink of bankruptcy and now wish to reclaim control – are erroneous, misleading, and needlessly distracting.
Most important to note is that any property or equity deal that the Executive Council (Exco) of the South African Rugby Union believes has sufficient merit to be presented to the General Council of the WPRFU, cannot be completed without the approval of that General Council. The decision will be Western Province’s; no-one else’s.
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Below is a timeline of events that led to the SARU Exco’s constitutionally appropriate application of the power to take a dysfunctional union into administration:
“All unions have to conduct their business affairs in such a way that, at all times, they are in a sound financial position, comply with the laws of the Republic and adhere to the requirements of good governance inter alia as expounded in the King Report on Governance for South Africa, 2009 (“the King Report”) and the King Code of Governance for South Africa, 2009 (“the King Code”) which came into effect on 1 March 2010, and to ensure that their commercial companies, if any, similarly conduct their business affairs in such a way that, at all times, they are in a sound financial position, comply with the laws of the Republic and be guided by the requirements of good governance inter alia as expounded in the King Report and the King Code.”
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In conclusion, SA Rugby looks forward to ending Western Province’s unfortunate period of administration in the coming months with a solution approved by its clubs. The path taken has so far brought stability on and off the field while the process being followed to ensure the Union’s financial sustainability has been rigorously vetted from a legal and governance perspective.
We would urge all stakeholders that the greatest service they can do to WPRFU right now is to allow the proposed solutions to come to its General Council without sideshows and interference where the membership will be able to decide their own fate.