Post-apartheid, South African rugby has had to undergo transformation to accommodate and accept the diverse cultures within the country.
In the professional era, head coaches of colour have been few, most notable national coaches were Paul Treu (Sevens), Pieter de Villiers and recently Alistair Coetzee and Sandile Ngcobo, who were sacked after two seasons on the job.
Upon completion of the 2023/24 United Rugby Championship (URC) season, the Vodacom Blue Bulls announced Phiwe Nomlomo, affectionately known as “Coach P”, as the head coach of the Currie Cup side.
Nomlomo does not mince his words when he talks about some of the challenges he’s faced with and his appointment as a black head coach.
“It’s tough as f%#k! When you hear black head coach; it is just a head coach. It is not different to any coach. It’s an honour to look after the Bulls,” he told SportsBoom.com
Speaking on the importance of developing coaches in South Africa, he refused to be called a “black coach”, rather just as a coach.
“You talk about that [development of coaches], in the coaching staff you got a guy like Werner [Kruger] who played overseas, played for Scarlets and has got over 100 games, Currie Cup and Super Rugby with the Bulls. A guy like Kennedy [Tsimba], who is a Hall of Famer as a flyhalf to manage games, it makes my life a lot easier. The coaching staff is strong and that makes a massive difference in my life.”
“I tell you why I don’t like it [black head coach]; imagine the players hearing that, at the end of the day they see a coach. You can call it whatever you want, the stigma is not what we want when we coach and we don’t coach according to colour, we pick the best people. It’s null and void to me,” he added.
He breaks down his objectives for the season in this manner: “We want to win games… that’s it! We prepped only after the URC was done. For us it was more on keeping the guys sharp if they were needed in the back end of the URC. In terms of the warm-up matches, we played Griquas and Namibia. It went incredibly well, we want to build squad depth. It’s a 12 week competition the turnaround is tight.”
The Bulls have had a stellar start to the Currie Cup, -having beat Western Province in a rain inflicted encounter, before they destroyed the Griffons
52-10. They then walloped Toyo-ta Cheetahs 25-13 last week.
Yesterday, they played against DHL Western Province in Pretoria and Nomlomo is certainly looking to build on this positive start to the campaign.
