The Stormers’ spirited performance against European champions La Rochelle sent out the message that the SA challenge in the Champions Cup will come, but their coach John Dobson is probably right when he says it will take a few years before a local team wins it.
In fact, odd though this may appear, the chances of a SA winner in rugby's equivalent of soccer’s Champions League happening next season might depend on how a team not involved in the upper echelon of European competition goes in the next few weeks.
The Sharks achieved what was expected on Sunday by advancing past Zebre to the quarterfinals of the secondary competition, the Challenge Cup. They will play against Edinburgh in Durban at the weekend and if they retain their current momentum they will have a good chance of making the semifinal.
The Sharks winning the Challenge Cup is not in itself a reason to get excited. The Challenge Cup is for the teams who can’t make it into the Champions Cup, and I needed to look it up to remember who won it last year. Why winning it would be significant for the Sharks is that it will get them into next season’s Champions Cup. The other route of making it through a top eight finish in the United Rugby Championship (URC) is now beyond them.
The entire Champions Cup is played at full strength and with André Esterhuizen, Jason Jenkins and Trevor Nyakane among the names we know about who are heading to Durban for next season, the Sharks should have the star-studded quality in their first-choice team to make them the Champions Cup specialists that La Rochelle are.
La Rochelle have won the Champions Cup two years in a row but they are not as successful in the French Top 14.
The Bulls will be travelling to Northampton for this weekend’s Champions Cup quarterfinal and have a fair chance of becoming the first SA team to make the semifinal round. However, from the semifinal round onwards the competition will be played only in Europe and the memory of what happened to them against Leinster in their last URC game suggests that if they have to meet Leinster, La Rochelle or Toulouse away from their Loftus fortress it would be a bridge too far for them.
Which is the caveat I’d also add when looking at the Stormers’ prospects in the Champions Cup next season. They beat the European champions in December in the pool stages and were unlucky not to win the round of 16 clash. By the end of that game the Cape side had lost three loose-forwards, their skipper Salmaan Moerat and wing Leolin Zas to injury. They had a makeshift pack on the field with hooker Andre-Hugo Venter on the flank.
Yet had Suleiman Hartzenberg managed to get the ball 10m closer to the posts when he scored the try that cut the deficit to one point on the hooter, Manie Libbok would have had less difficulty with the attempted winning conversion in the treacherous conditions. The Stormers’ heroic effort would have been rewarded.
But the game was played in Cape Town, so what it really told us was what we already knew — on their home ground the Stormers can beat any opponent. That’s not the same as saying they can win the Champions Cup right now, and if they had got over the line against La Rochelle, they’d be heading to Leinster this week.
A trip to Dublin now with a half-crocked first-choice team for a game they’d maybe have, at best, a 10% chance of winning, would have compromised their URC challenge. They are at a delicate stage of their challenge for a top four spot in their bread and butter competition, and have crucial home games against the Ospreys the week after the Champions Cup quarterfinal and then one against Leinster.
With the squad getting back on the Tuesday before the Ospreys game, it would have necessitated the selection of a second-string team which would have introduced unnecessary jeopardy to a must-win game. Which illustrates my point — right now the SA teams, with the travel challenges they face, don’t have the depth to excel in both the Champions Cup and URC.
Another win over La Rochelle to make it two in the season would have been massive for the Stormers from the viewpoint of their standing in the game. But winning another URC title is a lot more realistic goal right now and that would have been compromised had Libbok succeeded with his conversion.
The Sharks by contrast, when at full strength, could be good Champions Cup specialists. They just need to develop enough depth to ensure they are good enough in the URC, where many games are played understrength, to qualify.
However, as the wider net of Bulls and Stormers players gets more accustomed to the Champions Cup, they will become serious challengers too. The two Stormers performances against La Rochelle showed us that.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.