The realisation that this will be the last rugby column for this year gives pause for reflection on how much has been changed by the Covid-19 pandemic and where SA rugby is headed in these changing times.
Some change is temporary. Hopefully, next year the pre-Covid trend of writing my last column from the press box at the Cape Town Stadium during the Sunday play at the World Series Sevens event will be resumed. After having the appetite for a return to normality — proper match day atmosphere — whet by the return of limited crowds for the recent United Rugby Championship (URC) games, eagerness is now turning to impatience.
The return of crowds will make the sport fun again. Contrary to overseas opinion, it wasn’t Rassie Erasmus’s video that soured the British and Irish Lions series, but that it had to be played in the bio-bubble environment without crowds.
What the Springboks had to go through just to ensure they played international rugby, and thus saved SA Rugby and the franchises/unions from financial ruin, has been documented enough. That they managed to get through a year in which they were constantly isolating and quarantining, and experienced their fair share of Covid-19 inspired hiccups, with a Lions series win and with their No 1 world ranking retained was a mighty achievement.
Continuing unpredictability
Forget the rancour that has lingered after the Lions series, this was a time when that old cliché of rugby being the ultimate winner was fully justified. Those who contributed to making it happen deserve an award. But the challenges are not completely consigned to history, as we were reminded when four visiting overseas teams had to cancel their scheduled URC games against SA franchises.
And while normality appears to have been restored to sport in the UK and Europe, even that is looking a little tenuous now, with the crisis that hit Tottenham Hotspur being the headline example of the continuing unpredictability.
What we can be certain of is that in the time of Covid-19, rugby in SA has changed dramatically and irreversibly. When I first started writing about sport in the early 1990s the rugby season ran from April to October, and I was able to write about cricket in the summers.
Those days are long gone but the landscape has been changed even further by the realignment of the SA rugby season to fit the northern season. That was confirmed by Friday’s SA Rugby announcement that the 2022 Currie Cup will start in mid-January and be completed by June.
As it will be played at the same time as the URC, the top players from the four franchises competing in the cross-hemisphere competition won’t be playing in the Currie Cup. The domestic competition has been an understrength competition for many years, but it is morphing even further towards being a feeder competition now, similar to the old Vodacom Cup.
No break
One big stumbling block to a smooth transition to rugby becoming a summer sport in SA, and the off-season being in midyear rather than over the December/January holiday period, is that the Boks are still following a southern hemisphere international schedule.
When the Boks should be enjoying their off season in August, they are scheduled to be playing Argentina, New Zealand and Australia in the Rugby Championship. When will they rest? It might appear they are resting now but that is only because URC has taken a break to allow the Champions Cup to be played. From next year, at least one SA team will be part of that competition and for those players this will not be a break; rugby will continue through December.
Something is going to have to give regarding the Rugby Championship and the annual meetings with the All Blacks that drive SA’s participation in that competition. At the very least, a change of scheduling is necessary so the Boks aren’t playing New Zealand, who would be in midseason, in what should be the SA off season.
With the SA season now aligned with the northern one, it does make sense for the Boks to be part of what would become a Seven Nations. It will surely in time just become logical necessity for SA to be regarded as a northern nation regarding the global fixture schedule.
What used to be the June tours have now become July tours, but should the Boks be playing teams such as Wales, England or Scotland in that window? Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to play their southern hemisphere rivals in July, so that August-September can provide them with a proper off season?
In time it will become more obvious that the switch away from the southern hemisphere Super Rugby competition to the URC will entail a more radical, fundamental and challenging shift in approach and thinking than the initial surface view might have suggested would be necessary.
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