Israel’s SA-born rugby coach helps heal historical wounds

On 19 March, Kevin Musikanth made a little bit of rugby history.

In his 400th first class match as a head coach, for once the score didn’t matter.

At stake was the inaugural Sons of Abraham trophy.

On the ground in Dubai, the Israeli national team was meeting the United Arab Emirates team.

Just getting the game together was a triumph; against geopolitics, regional rivalries and an international pandemic.

It was also a personal victory for the South African-born Rugby Israel coach.

“It’s incredible what sport can do, but I’m biased,” Musikanth, 43, says.

“I believe rugby’s a game that is played in heaven. We only have to look at our own country to see that. Rugby brought South Africa together and continues to do that.”

Israel and UAE national rugby squads after the inaugural Sons of Abraham match in Dubai on 19 March. Picture: Supplied

After the Abraham Accord was signed last year, Musikanth reached out to his UAE counterpart, Apollo Perellini, one of the few rugby players to have played both rugby union and rugby league at a world cup.

“I’d never met him before, even though he’s an absolute legend of the game, I knew him through LinkedIn and I said to him: ‘This has never been done before, so why don’t we do it?’ Apollo didn’t even hesitate. Here was a New Zealander and a South African wanting to do something special for the game.”

It wasn’t plain sailing, it took seven months to put the game together, not including the rigorous Covid-19 protocols that had to be met.

“I think I was Covid-tested nine times over a 12-day period,” Musikanth remembers.

The two teams didn’t just play a game against each other, an entire rugby camp was held, with Perellini coaching the Israeli players and Musikanth the Emiratis, before two mixed teams were picked to play against each other in special commemorative jerseys made for the occasion.

“Apollo and I just sat in the middle and we just let the players get on with it. They looked like they had been playing together for years, rather than having just met.

“I don’t think it’s ever happened before that an Israeli national team and an Arab state have joined and played on the same team and that was absolutely wonderful to watch.”

Israel won the Sons of Abraham trophy 33-0.

Musikanth was appointed coach of the national team in 2018 but recently he was promoted to technical director of rugby for the entire country, across the 15 and seven-a-side format.

That’s what he does for half the year, for the other six months, he is based in Johannesburg where he is the director of rugby at King David High School in Linksfield.

It’s a coupling, as he describes it, that has been made possible because of his earlier experience as an entrepreneur running a chain of high-performance gyms in the Cape, one of which he still retains at Wynberg Boys High in Cape Town.

He has been coaching for the past 23 years – even before injury curtailed his own playing career when he was 23.

He has coached at every age group level, at six schools as well as four clubs; together with World Cup-winning conditioning coach Steve McIntyre, he started rugby at Reddam House in Cape Town, he has been director of rugby at UCT, where he won the Varsity Cup, at Wynberg Boys’ High where he is an old boy and at St John’s College in Johannesburg.

He cut his coaching teeth at historic Cape clubs: Villagers and False Bay, where he won the Super B League twice as the head coach, as well as Western Province’s emerging under-21 team.

Musikanth’s dream had been to one day coach Super Rugby, but Covid-19 put paid to that.

“Being a coach is the same as being a player … someone has to pick you and just because you are not being picked doesn’t mean you are not good enough. The only time you fail is when you give up.

“It took me 17 years of coaching before being able to turn professional and I have to remind myself that when things get tough, in the end, so long as I have a whistle in my hand and rugby dreams in my heart then I am happy,” he says.

He’s set big targets for the Israeli national team, working towards ultimately qualifying to play in the Olympics in the seven-a-side format and the Rugby World Cup.

Kevin Ritchie

– news@citizen.co.za