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SARU defiant over Kings

Johannesburg - The decision to award the Vodacom Super Rugby expansion franchise to Melbourne had only strengthened the resolve of the South African Rugby Union to see the Southern Kings included in the competition, said Mr Oregan Hoskins, president of SARU.

“We are extremely disappointed that the Southern Kings were unsuccessful but this process has proved that the region is ready for a franchise and that it could be up and running from an operational point of view in a very short space of time,” said Mr Hoskins.

“The Expert panel expressed the opinion that the Kings’ Bid was superior in organisational and rugby terms but we could not overcome the fact that there was a potential loss to SANZAR of TV revenue of the order of R137m over five years from Australian broadcasters.

“This is a binding decision and we respect and accept the verdict of the experts and thank them for their work – but this is not the end of the road of the Kings.”

Mr Hoskins said the next step was to further explore the dynamics between the three provinces in the region and consider their individual aspirations – an issue that was identified as a cause for concern by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Sport on Tuesday.

“SA Rugby would have taken a leading role in the Kings’ deployment in Super Rugby in 2011 but the committee raised their concerns about the cohesion of the three provinces at the very positive meeting we had with them on Tuesday,” said Mr Hoskins.

“We will be following through with our commitment to meet the committee privately with the leading role players to discuss those issues before we take our next step.”

SANZAR’s Expert Panel clearly identified that the Kings’ presented the more advanced Bid in virtually all areas: those of business and financial planning; organisational structure and governance as well as being able to point to a strong rugby tradition and large playing base.

However, those were outweighed by geography and the loss of revenue SANZAR faced if a non-Australian franchise were to be awarded the expansion slot.

“We knew we started as second favourites but we were determined that the strengths of the rugby and business case would have made the Kings a worthy addition to Vodacom Super Rugby,” said Mr Hoskins. “The financial implications – which only emerged at a late stage – were factors that obviously weighed heavily in the balance.”
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