Vodacom Bulls director of rugby Alan Zondagh says the union is looking for ways to offload junior players after SA Rugby scrapped its U19 competition.
While the Bulls have started the U20 Volcano Super League this year, an amateur club competition that aims to create an additional pipeline and pathway for players, there are still reportedly close to 100 contracts that need to be cut.
Zondagh told SuperSport’s Brenden Nel that the Bulls will no longer be able to contract scores of junior players as they have done in the past.
‘We are fighting against the money situation and we have too many players contracted at this union at the moment,’ Zondagh said. ‘We have the most of anybody and [even though] we have just started cutting down, we still have the most.
‘I’ve made a decision that if we send somebody away, a young player who is here and he is not going to be part of our new plan, I will make sure that we place him somewhere where he can carry on with his rugby. That is the least we can do. The parents sent their boy to us.
‘We have a number of players we can loan and we are in discussion with other franchises in South Africa and teams overseas. People are always looking for players, but we must first decide who to keep. The young boys who have arrived here, I don’t know them.
‘A lot of their contracts come to an end at the end of the year in any case. Those are not the problems, the problems are the ones you don’t want to have that have a contract to 2020 or 2021 and you know he isn’t going to play Super Rugby. The new emphasis will be that we are only interested in a player if he can play Super Rugby.’
Photo: Lefty Shivambu/Gallo Images
