The 13th round of the United Rugby Championship (URC) provided some stark examples about what is good and bad about the SA participation in the cross hemisphere competition in comparison to being in Super Rugby.
Firstly the positive — while the Sharks have undeniably rediscovered the habit of conspiring against themselves, and were lucky to get away with a win against the second last placed team, you do have to give credit to the huge progress Zebre have made over the past year.
Not long ago they were the whipping boys and you could expect them to lose many of the games they played by more than 30 points. For the first 11 minutes it looked like the Sharks were going to live up to what had been predicted as they shot into a 14-0 lead.
Perhaps they were duped into thinking it was going to be easy, too easy, for after that it was anything but and Zebre delivered a superb rugby exhibition regardless of whether or not you thought the Sharks helped them with some naive tactics.
Sharks coach John Plumtree was understandably frustrated but also careful in criticising his own players not to be seen to be denigrating Zebre. He made the point that their performance was an indication of how the Italian teams have figured out now how to play the game.
As he has also coached the Sharks and the Hurricanes in Super Rugby, Plumtree’s praise for their all ranging attacking style should carry some weight, as should his contention that it’s made the competition highly competitive. He wasn’t just saying it to sound nice in the media either — I bumped into him before the press conference and his comment on Zebre was “Wow, they were good weren’t they!”
The Zebre captain Geronimo Prisciantelli produced as good a performance as Kings Park can expect to see from a fullback this season, which is saying something if you consider that when he is fit, Springbok No 15 Aphele Fassi calls the stadium home. A big defeat to France in the Six Nations notwithstanding, Italy are on the right track, and the URC competition is on the right track if you consider how even the Welsh teams have now started to be competitive. Wales' international failures are not reflected in the form of their regional sides.
And to those Kiwi and Aussie pundits who reckon Super Rugby is stronger than the URC and other European competitions, I’d argue that it is hard to imagine even their best teams boasting anything near the depth of Leinster.
Which cues the point about what was negative — we are now into the fourth season of the URC, and the crack Irish province has yet to send a full strength team to SA for a league game. Their only full strength visit was when they were beaten by the Bulls in 2024’s Loftus semifinal.
Yes, Bulls director of rugby Jake White was right when he said that even the Leinster second string team is strong, but he was wrong when he said the side his men played on Saturday wasn’t second string. They did still have Jordie Barrett and RG Snyman, but given the number of Ireland internationals that were out, they were very under-strength.
Which is why instead of everyone celebrating the Bulls’ last gasp win, which was actually the first time the Dublin combination has lost anywhere or in any competition this season, it was a celebration that was a bit muted, like the Sharks’ was, by the quality of the performance and the narrowness of the win.
Given the game was just a week after the end of the Six Nations, it was understandable that Leinster didn’t come full strength. They do face a quandary in the coming week though — they play the Sharks a week before they play a Round of 16 tie against the dangerous Harlequins in the Champions Cup and their full strength team hasn’t played together now since January. Surely the top combinations need game time or they carry risk into the first knock-out game of the competition they focus so much of their effort on?
Most of the issues that prompt Leinster to go under-strength are unavoidable and come with the territory in a cross-hemisphere competition, but just a smidgen of better planning to the fixture list could make it more likely we see the top Leinster side come to this country to sell the competition.
Which is the same as what you could say about the ridiculous situation that saw three good games all kicking off at the same time on Saturday. There wasn’t a late game on Saturday, so why the Stormers and Bulls had to play at the same time is anyone’s guess. It keeps happening too.
We never had that in Super Rugby, and we never had clashes with the international programme either in Super Rugby. It’s completely avoidable and just requires a bit of common sense. Get it right and the URC will be hard to top as a competition.
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