Assignment: Francois Pienaar will attempt to reinvent Saracens

Francois Pienaar climbed Mount Kilimanjaro recently and followed that with a 110km charity bike ride round Cape Town in the company of Matt Damon, who is playing him in a Clint Eastwood movie centred on Nelson Mandela and the Springboks' 1995 World Cup win. Reinventing Saracens as a home from home for South Africans in London should be a cinch by comparison, and Pienaar will be there next month to continue the push.

The man whose green number six jersey Mandela famously wore to the 1995 final, spawning an iconic image of the Rainbow Nation, is on the board at Saracens. And Pienaar may feel he has unfinished business after his six-year stint as captain, chief executive and coach ended tamely in 2002.

After another season off the Premiership pace, and losing up to £3m a year, they signed half a dozen South Africans and plan to tap into the hearts and wallets of the estimated 750,000 ex-pats around the capital. With the Lions tour to South Africa imminent it is the perfect time to present Pienaar and fellow director Morne du Plessis, a former Springbok captain and manager of the 1995 team, as figureheads of "SArries", a term club chief executive Edward Griffiths coined.

Despite the formidable frontmen, Saracens are on the back foot. Griffiths – an Englishman with a South African accent from working in the Republic for 13 years – is dealing with the flak flying since the resignation of coach Eddie Jones, and the disgruntlement of the contracted players told by Jones' incoming replacement, Brendan Venter, that they had no first-team future. He pleads with a sceptical public to ask not what Saracens will do for South Africa, but the other way around.

"We did a ticket promotion for South Africans at last week's match against Bath and there were 600 in the south stand," said Griffiths. "These people don't have green heads and bad body odour. It's rugby people together.

"This whole South African initiative is a huge opportunity, and one which is frankly envied by other Premiership clubs. It is not to replace or disturb, it's simply to grow and to become successful on the field and commercially viable."