It was another bleak weekend for SA rugby in the EPCR (European Professional Club Rugby) competitions and it doesn’t require a qualification in rugby rocket science to figure out why the local teams are struggling.
The Stormers were the exception. Their systematic destruction of the visiting Sale Sharks was outstanding, with the platform created by perfecting the template that won them the inaugural United Rugby Championship (URC) title three seasons ago — organised and suffocating defence supplemented by lethal attack from chaos and transition.
It was vintage Stormers and yet just a month ago the alarmists were out in force as the Cape side was caught up in a four-match losing sequence that saw them languishing on the URC log.
The turnaround didn’t start with the win over the Lions in December, but in the game they lost to the Sharks in Durban at end-November. They did everything but win that game and the relief etched across the faces of the Sharks players and management afterwards told a story.
The Stormers were still understrength then so there must have been some kind of adjustment within the group during the international break that preceded that game. But the biggest contributing reason to why the Stormers were struggling before was they were paying the price for the ridiculous 12-month local season. That they are succeeding now is because players have returned from injury.
It isn’t more complicated than that. From September to the first weeks of December they were not only missing players who were out with injuries sustained playing for the Springboks in what should have been the SA off-season (Salmaan Moerat, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and others), they were also missing a second tier of players who sustained injuries in the Currie Cup, also played in what should be the local off-season.
Which brings us to the teams that failed at the weekend. I wrote at the time that the Lions might end up paying for being the union represented in the URC that took the Currie Cup the most seriously, and those chickens might be coming home to roost. Against the Stormers in the URC and now against Montpellier in the Challenge Cup they have looked a pale shadow of the team that started so impressively off the momentum picked up in the domestic competition.
They and the Bulls have an extended run of home matches to come, but both have hit a dip, with the Bulls’ sequence of four losses explainable by the lengthy injury list they started the season with because of the Currie Cup and those sustained while fulfilling Bok commitments (Ruan Nortjé for one).
Like the Stormers and Sharks did when they went to Harlequins and Leicester respectively before Christmas, the Bulls went understrength to Castres at the weekend. And they got thumped. The previous year they also sent a second string team to an away game in France, that time Lyon, and should have won the game. They only missed out due to a late penalty miss from Jaco van der Walt.
The Stormers were also very competitive with a second string team away against Leicester at that time, and yet like the Bulls, a year later their second stringers were smashed by Harlequins. Why the deterioration? It comes down to both franchises having so many injuries to contend with that those weren’t really second string teams but third string sides. The units that played in December 2023 were a lot stronger.
Which cues the Sharks, who would have been able to field a much stronger second team against Leicester, and might therefore have avoided the hole in which they now find themselves in the Champions Cup, had it not been for injuries that apart from influential Boks have also included several players who contributed heavily during the Currie Cup playoff phase.
Injuries definitely blunted their challenge in what should have been their showcase game of the season against Toulouse. Sharks coach John Plumtree has more Boks who are committed to the southern and northern hemisphere seasons on his books than the other franchises so it was understandable he was the one to talk out, warning just before New Year that players can’t play a nonstop 12-month season without there being a negative impact.
SA Rugby CEO Rian Oberholzer responded by saying the coaches should stop complaining, but they have good reason to complain. Perhaps Oberholzer and his fellow administrators should be criticised far more directly than they are being. The Boks winning successive World Cups does not excuse the poor decision-making affecting the sport lower down and which could soon start affecting the Boks too.
Looking after the welfare of the players, franchises and provinces is surely a big part of Oberholzer’s remit so he shouldn’t be pretending the problem doesn’t exist. Instead stake-holders should be demanding it be tackled as a matter of urgency.
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