After the euphoria of the Springboks winning the Rugby Championship it felt like SA rugby returned to earth with a bump at the weekend, with the Stormers the only local team to win a URC game.
But while there will doubtless be concern that the Bulls and Sharks lost so comprehensively to Ulster and Leinster, respectively, there is context that needs to be considered before any alarm bells are sounded.
While the two losses to Irish teams was not a good look just more than a month ahead of the Boks meeting Ireland in their November international, a look at how Leinster struggled on their two match tour of SA that preceded their 31-5 win over the Sharks brings some perspective.
This has been one of those rare northern hemisphere seasons where the disadvantage that SA teams face by having to start the competition without their Boks was at least partly balanced by the British & Irish Lions players having their return to action delayed until the third round. We saw with Leinster’s performances in SA, particularly their 35-0 loss to the Stormers in the tournament opener, just how much that hurt the URC champions.
With many of their stars back they were a different team against the Sharks. The Sharks also had some Boks back, but because of the effort they put in to win the championship for their country, there was just a smattering of returning players rather than a flood.
Injury meant Bok fullback Aphelele Fassi wasn’t available to play, but also sitting out were fellow stars Ox Nché, Eben Etzebeth, Siya Kolisi, Grant Williams and André Esterhuizen. Experienced lock Jason Jenkins, a former Leinster player, was a late withdrawal because of injury. Those are seven influential Sharks players who were missing and to beat Leinster at Leinster, even on a day when the hosts were also still without a few Lions, requires all hands on deck.
There are too many occasions when the URC results are determined by where the teams are in regard to the eligibility and workload of their star players.
Even the assimilation of Sacha Feinberg-Mongomezulu and Damian Willemse into the Stormers team did not go off seamlessly, but it would have been a lot easier for John Dobson to fit two players back into his team than was the case for new Bulls coach Johan Ackermann, who had Boks returning in several key areas.
In both the Sharks and Bulls cases the coaches were fielding players who hadn’t been part of training until this past week, but that wasn’t the case for Leinster. Their assistant coach Sean O’Brien worked with the returning Lions players in the period that the rest of the squad was in SA and it showed against the Sharks.
I thought the Bulls were a little unlucky with the refereeing and should have been far ahead at halftime against Ulster, but the longer Ulster hung in the more they grew their confidence and the more a Bulls team that had so many changes to it struggled to retain momentum.
There are too many occasions when the URC results are determined by where the teams are in regard to the eligibility and workload of their star players.
And the small turnout at the Scarlets-Stormers game was a reminder of another misgiving felt at the time when the SA switch to the URC from Super Rugby was first mooted. The question was asked then whether there’d be much interest in teams representing Welsh coal mining regions, and Friday’s game brought home the reality that not even the Welsh are that crazy about their teams.
Television money runs rugby now but the turnout at venues is still important to the product. In the previous week it was hard to argue with a colleague who, noting the poor turnout for a game featuring the Sharks and the Dragons in inclement conditions in Newport, asked who outside the most ardent supporters of the teams would want to watch such a game on a Friday night.
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