The big rugby talking point locally during the festive season was SA’s participation in the Champions Cup and the decision made by the Sharks and Stormers to go understrength to their away games against Leicester Tigers and Harlequins respectively.
You do have to ask whether there is any point in making such a fuss about being part of the Champions Cup, which requires a minimum of an eighth-placed finish in the United Rugby Championship (URC), if you are not going to take it seriously. And when the coaches send understrength teams to games in the northern hemisphere, it does appear that way — they aren’t taking it seriously.
The reality though is the coaches had no choice as they faced a difficult balancing act about the logistics of being part of two cross-hemisphere competitions. The Sharks, as they discovered when they misfired in the URC the season before last, will not be in next season’s Champions Cup if they do not shape up in the bread and butter competition.
Going to Leicester with a full-strength team would have seriously compromised their chances of beating the Bulls in their key URC Christmas derby a week later. Which given they were going to Cape Town, where the Stormers haven’t lost a derby in more than three years, a week after that, was a must-win game for them.
Ditto for the Stormers. They were heading into their two festive season derbies against the Lions and the Sharks with just two wins in six URC games, which meant qualification for next season’s Champions Cup and the URC playoffs was under serious threat and the two games were must-wins for them. On top of that, like the Sharks, they had a mounting injury list.
The Sharks’ injury list was added to when they came to Cape Town and what has now become a must-win Champions Cup tie against mighty Toulouse in Durban this weekend is likely to see the Sharks without two key players in the form of centre André Esterhuizen and fullback Aphelele Fassi. Both were stretchered off in the Stormers game.
Fortunately the Sharks are expecting Eben Etzebeth and Bongi Mbonambi back to play against the French giants, and they are both influential players, but as their coach John Plumtree pointed out at the post-match press conference in Cape Town, every time players come back new injuries counterbalance the benefits.
Of course injuries are part of rugby and it would be naive to think otherwise. It is rare for a club or franchise to have a full complement of fit players to choose from during a long, busy season. And long and busy it is in SA. Plumtree provided media quotes in that press conference that provided a sobering warning to temper the festive spirits after a game that attracted more than 50,000 spectators in the week between Christmas and New Year.
Plumtree contextualised his team’s injury crisis by pointing to the 12-month treadmill the top SA players are on, with the international team following the southern hemisphere season through the Springbok participation in the Rugby Championship while they are on the northern timetable at club and franchise level.
Plumtree said it was unsustainable and warned that unless something was done to ensure there was a proper break for the players, meaning an off-season followed by a preseason in which players can refresh and then properly condition themselves for what is to come, the Boks risk being in a position in which several top players don’t make it to the next World Cup.
He’s right. He didn’t single out Etzebeth, SA’s most capped player, for special mention at that particular press conference, but he did speak about the impact of so much rugby on Etzebeth’s body when the lock sat out other games during the December period.
The Boks are afforded windows of rest during the season courtesy of an agreement between the national management and the franchise coaches, but taking breaks in two or three-week windows scattered through the year is not the same as a proper off-season.
It should be a concern for all SA rugby fans and stakeholders that while the All Black players that were beaten by the Boks in the Championship a few months ago were putting their feet up in December and taking their minds off rugby by watching cricket, fishing and lying on the beach, the Boks were effectively still busy with the same season. And will still be in the same season and on the treadmill when they face the All Blacks in two crucial Championship matches in New Zealand in August.
When those matches are being played, the Boks’ northern opponents, and the ones they play at club level, will be having their turn to rest. It is a situation that isn’t sustainable and it amounts to the biggest threat to continued Bok domination of world rugby.
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