If South Africa’s franchises are serious about continuing to participate in European competitions, and in turn to be taken seriously as participants, they need to up their game from the abysmal showing in the Champions Cup on Saturday.
Either that, or the season’s schedule needs to be changed, and quickly, to ease the burden on the country who have won the past two Rugby World Cups but are now claiming they are being stretched too far by the calendar as it is.
It was England’s Premiership 3, South Africa 0, in Saturday’s three ties in the Champions Cup competition which is sponsored by a South African bank, and which the country’s teams joined two years ago on the back of entering the United Rugby Championship and exiting the southern-hemisphere Super Rugby, with the finance from the domestic broadcasters SuperSport said to be welcome to their new European buddies.
Fans of Harlequins, Leicester Tigers and Northampton Saints were no doubt happy to bag the points in the second round of the pool stage, with only four rounds overall before the qualifiers for the last 16 are decided next month.
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Read MoreThey were singing at Quins’ Stoop stadium throughout the final quarter of the 53-16 thrashing of the Stormers, with Alex Dombrandt and Cadan Murley laughing and joking as they ran in a hat-trick of tries each.
But there was a significant South African presence in the Stoop stands, as ex-pats had turned up in strong numbers, and surely they were aghast at the pathetic efforts of the franchise based on the proud Western Province.
There were very occasional flashes of talented running from the Stormers, but an overwhelmingly hapless second-string team was summed up in a sloppy kick downfield by lock/captain Salmaan Moerat, that was run back by Quins for Murley to score the sixth of the home team’s eight tries.
“As a second-row forward, you probably don’t want to be kicking the ball back to Marcus Smith,” the watching former Quins captain Chris Robshaw observed, drily.
The Sharks were similarly thrashed by Leicester at Welford Road, 56-17, while the best English performance belonged to Northampton, winners away to Bulls in 30-degree heat and altitude in Pretoria, 30-21.
The positive initial argument of South Africa’s teams being more comfortable and natural in Europe due to the similar time zones and reduced travelling time has rapidly faded to a state of derision or concern on all sides.
They are often making torturous journeys to get here, with wear and tear inflicted on the players, and – critically, as Sharks’ head coach John Plumtree asserted in angry words at Leicester – travelling (or unravelling) up and down inside a week.
Sharks boss John Plumtree has spoken angrily about the schedule (Photo: PA)“I want to bring our strongest Sharks side here and play on the biggest stage,” said Plumtree. “I want to go out there and give Leicester a good hiding in front of their home crowd.
“But the reality is we’ve got to look after these athletes. They are not robots. And right now, the South African boys are treated like robots.”
Sharks left out Springboks stars Eben Etzebeth, Bongi Mbonambi, Lukhanyo Am and Makazole Mapimpi, on the injury list after the previous week’s narrow home victory against Exeter, while Siya Kolisi, Ox Nché and Andre Esterhuizen were rested.
Most of them had an intense Rugby Championship and autumn Test series with South Africa before resuming their club duties.
Plumtree said “the organisers need to have a look at it”, for sending his team to and from England in a few days. “We arrive on Wednesday and play on Saturday. It’s hardly high performance.”
That same plea to give proper respect to the sport’s best players was made by another coach of great experience, Jake White of the Bulls, when he brought a weak team to Northampton for last season’s losing Champions Cup quarter-final.
And White told The i Paper this month the same could easily happen again this season, with the last 16 and quarter-final matches back to back in April.
The weird Challenge Cup solution was to have the Cheetahs playing out of Amsterdam instead of Bloemfontein.
In the URC they have addressed the problem by giving the South African teams a run of home-based games in the next few weeks, and away matches are bracketed together so they aren’t on and off planes like full-time baggage handlers.
It must be in the scope of the Champions Cup – which is organised, if that’s the right word, by the three leagues of the Premiership, Top 14 and URC – to sort this out.
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Read MoreThe bigger picture is of so many competitions and competing interests shoe-horned into a season that stretches to next August with the British & Irish Lions tour.
Stormers’ hindrance on Saturday was injuries, with a mind-boggling list of Manie Libbok, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Deon Fourie, Evan Roos, Keke Morabe, Ben-Jason Dixon, Frans Malherbe, Steven Kitshoff, Damian Willemse, Dan du Plessis and Ben Loader absent.
Anyone who says that teams in every country are resting and rotating does have a point – which is they simply must do, in order to show some fairness to the players in the madly intense schedule.
Sale for example brought back their England stars Luke Cowan-Dickie, Ben Curry, George Ford and Tom Roebuck for Saturday’s morale-boosting home win over Racing 92.
The Leicester boss Michael Cheika shrugged off Plumtree’s moans, saying “there is no solution required”, but that felt more like an argument that it’s the same for everybody, so get on with it – which is a different argument.
TV commentator Martin Gillingham, who knows the South African scene well, tweeted on Saturday: “The elastic is stretched to breaking point.”
Something has got to give, otherwise rugby’s latest experiment at feeding its fanbase will snap apart.
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