Another case for a central system

EXCLUSIVE: South Africa Rugby president Mark Alexander recently stated that the number of professional contracts will be reduced, which could see an improvement in the overall standard of the game if implemented correctly.

Anton van Zyl believes this is a step in the right direction and has come up with a suggestion of his own as to how the new model could work.

"Our current model, the revenue model of rugby, cannot sustainably support the number of professional rugby players in South Africa. I'm not saying that suddenly no-one should be paid, on the contrary, but some sort of a central system where we have your core group of players attached to the four main franchises, and then a central pool of semi-professional players who can be drawn at any time to any franchise - to me, makes perfect sense," Van Zyl said.

Morgan Newman and Howie Kahn were sceptical about the suggestion and questioned what would happen to the semi-professional players, to which Van Zyl backed up his position.

"At the moment, the entire player pool is spread too thinly, over far too many provinces/franchises. If we reduce that number, make the squads bigger, I don't think it's going to be as much of a problem," Van Zyl added.