Dave Wessels has hailed South Africa’s schoolboy system and player pathways which he believes are unmatched.
In 2024, former Melbourne Rebels and Western Force head coach Wessels joined the SA Rugby structures in the position of general manager for high-performance rugby, an appointment that allowed Rassie Erasmus to resume the head coach duties with the Springboks and relinquish the director of rugby role.
“The appointment of Dave Wessels achieves two objectives – it allows Rassie and Charles Wessels to focus solely on the national team while creating a resource that can provide greater direction and support to our other national teams,” Rian Oberholzer, CEO of SA Rugby, said at the time.
“In particular, it will allow for greater emphasis on the strategic needs and future plans of our sevens, women’s and junior national teams whose requirements will now receive singular attention.”
In his position, Wessels plays a massive role in the player pathways for all the national teams and oversees the Elite Player Development program, and it has proven to be successful with South Africa winning the World Rugby Junior World Championship last year.
Unmatched globally
Speaking to SuperSport at the SA Rugby Awards evening, Wessels hailed the level of care and professionalism that South African schools provide to their players, which makes his job easier further down the line.
Wessels believes that those structures are unmatched and obviously play a crucial role in the continued success of the national teams.
“We live in such an amazing ecosystem of rugby,” he said.
“The skill, investment, and care that our schools put into our rugby just to get us started is far beyond what anyone else in the world does.
“Then we have a responsibility, when those players leave school, to make sure that we keep up those standards.
“Then it’s up to the guys from the top, Rassie and those guys. I think everyone now aspires to be in that group, and they work hard and try to push for that.
“We have pushing from both ends, and it’s fantastic to be a part of that because it’s like a self-motivating system.”
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Rude health of grassroots rugby and SA Rugby’s revamp
The state of the sport in South Africa is in rude health with SA Rugby greenlighting a new professional women’s club competition this year whilst the SA Cup kicks off this weekend.
The Varsity Cup remains hugely popular in South African circles while SA Rugby announced a revamping of its professional junior rugby pathways with the creation of a new Under-23 competition to ensure emerging players are optimally prepared for senior rugby.
A new SA Rugby Under-23 Cup competition will kick off shortly with the four United Rugby Championship franchises. The Under-19 competition has been discontinued while the SA Rugby U20 Cup will return to the local schedule for the first time since 2023, replacing the SA Rugby U21 Cup (“first division”) competition. The U21 Shield competition (“second division”) remains unchanged.
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“We’ve seen the brilliant work done by our schoolboy coaches and as a result, our U18 teams have been in dominant form for some years, but that didn’t translate into success at U20 level,” said Wessels in the statement confirming the revamp.
“Something was amiss between U18 and U20 level, with other countries somehow overtaking us, and after a thorough review, we realised this age group needs more competitive game time.
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“Some of our Junior Bok players were playing as little as 10 games in the two years after school, which was much fewer than they were used to at school level – not an ideal preparation environment. Ultimately, playing the game is the best teacher.”
Meanwhile, he also released ‘great news’ on his X profile on Friday morning which read: “Club rugby is growing – participation numbers increased 13% in the last year. The heart and soul of SA Rugby. Well done to all the amazing people that are driving this.”
READ MORE: SA Rugby boss hails the impact of Rassie Erasmus in ‘creating golden era of South African rugby’
