It probably wasn’t his doing, but John Smit’s tenure as Sharks CEO will live in memory as the picture of SA’s 20-year struggle to come to terms with professionalism, both in how he got to the hot seat and what transpired thereafter.Smit was plucked from the Saracens changing room and sent straight to the Sharks boardroom in the middle of 2013. And by the time he landed back in the country he had already given then head coach John Plumtree the "DCM" — Don’t Come Monday.Smit is one of SA rugby’s most celebrated figures and the 2007 World Cup-winning captain’s achievements on the field would be hard to match. The board’s plan in 2013 was to mould him into a latter-day Brian van Zyl: both are Pretoria Boys’ High School alumni, both are adopted sons of Durban. They were cut from the same cloth, apparently.Van Zyl was CEO between 1994, two years before professionalism officially began, and 2013. He turned the former Banana Boys into a R14m annual profit entity and the sport’s biggest bran...
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