There are many good reasons to contend SA Rugby made the right choice by switching to the United Rugby Championship (URC) from Super Rugby. But there are still big teething issues and Bulls coach Jake White was right when he said local teams are disadvantaged.
As White says, four-match tours, which is what all the local franchises had to deal with towards the start of their current campaigns, is one of the things SA Rugby left Super Rugby to avoid.
The Stormers’ defeat to Cardiff was the last in the current batch of tour matches to be played overseas by SA teams. A record of 13 losses in 16 games doesn’t make good reading, but you don’t require a doctorate in rugby rocket science to figure out why it was so poor, and why the teams that were back home at the weekend so dramatically regained winning form.
Four-game tours are just too long and that all four teams were beaten in their final tour games is a carry through from the Super Rugby era, with that last game invariably being a bridge too far.
Those who saw the Stormers lose in Cardiff will agree the inaugural champions conspired against themselves, as indeed they did when they lost another game they should have been expected to win, the one in Treviso against Benetton.
If there was any game that fed the view that this might be a season in which the stars just won’t align for the Stormers like they did in their first two URC seasons, it was Treviso. It was summed up by Joseph Dweba diving for what he thought was the try line and what would have been the winning score only to discover he was still five metres short.
Against Cardiff the Stormers squandered a 14-0 lead after 12 minutes by departing from script and falling into what is starting to become a disturbing trend — they tried to overplay too much, became too elaborate and too rushed, and the number of times they lost the ball in contact led to a long sequence of Cardiff scrum put-ins.
Not that I am too concerned about the Stormers. When watching them I get the same feeling I got about the English football team I support, Liverpool, last season. Liverpool struggled in their 2022/23 campaign, but then they were always going to after playing in every final the previous season and being in the running for all four trophies right up to the last game of their league campaign.
Consistent contenders
Liverpool’s blip was one that I always felt would be temporary, they’d be back challenging again, and that has proved to be the case. By playing in two successive URC finals, the Stormers have proved they will be consistent contenders in future.
They can afford a slight blip after what they have achieved, and provided they do what Liverpool failed to do by at least ensuring they are in the qualification bracket for rugby’s equivalent of the Champions League (the Champions Cup), they will be OK. They have equity partners now but it is still relatively new for them — their real growth spurt should start during the off-season contracting window.
Noting again that the Stormers only have themselves to blame for their loss at Cardiff Arms Park, the attrition rate that comes at the end of a tour also meant the Cape franchise went into that last game with a severely depleted team. They were without Evan Roos, Joseph Dweba, Ben-Jason Dixon, Leolin Zas, Angelo Davids and other stalwarts, and that in addition to their missing Springboks.
Coach John Dobson, forever careful to be sporting in defeat, refused to blame the length of the tour for his team’s current poor position on the log, and said it is the same for all the SA teams. But it is only the same for the local teams, not the overseas sides who have a distinct advantage by not having to make the same lengthy tours that the SA teams do.
Neither is the travel over for the season now, like it would have been in Super Rugby. Their commitment to the Champions Cup means the Stormers will be overseas again the week after next to play Leicester Tigers, and ditto the Bulls the week after their Loftus clash with Saracens. They are then both back in the northern hemisphere for their next Champions Cup games in January, and then there are two more separate URC tours of two games each.
It’s hard to find a way of getting around the travel challenges, and both competitions benefit SA, but it would also be wrong to ignore White’s concerns and pretend it’s a more equal playing field than it was in Super Rugby. It isn’t.
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