No local team will come close to winning the Champions Cup until the 12-month season in SA is sorted out. Those aren’t my words but those of a top coach in conversation ahead of a United Rugby Championship (URC) final that vindicated his thinking.
That Leinster were going to win the URC was something many started to take as a given long before the playoffs arrived. A team made up of Ireland internationals supplemented by an All Black, a Springbok and a French international (on the bench) enjoyed a dominant season in league play and lost only twice — once to the Bulls in Pretoria and once to Scarlets. In both losses they were understrength.
Had the Bulls hosted the final, as they did last year’s semi, they may have stood a chance. But having to travel to Dublin a week after they played themselves off their feet in their semifinal against the Sharks was always going to be a bridge too far.
That is not to say that they weren’t disappointing. The ability of the Bulls to switch to a Plan B when they are fronted in the scrums and line-outs has always been questioned. And those questions will persist after a start that saw a reversal of the dominance they enjoyed in the scrums at Loftus last season and when some crucial line-outs went against the throw.
The Bulls did look at some points in the final like they had no clue. But just getting to the final this year against a team with the depth and quality of Leinster was always going to be the achievement to be celebrated and so it proved.
It was a different competition, but seeing the URC final brought to an end a lamentable season when it came to local participation in the EPRC competitions, it also brought home just how far away we are from seeing a local side compete properly for European glory in the Champions Cup.
Leinster are the benchmark in the URC when it comes to measuring whether SA teams are ready to improve on what so far has been one appearance from each of the Bulls, Sharks and Stormers in Champions Cup quarterfinals. They are the side in the competition that can be considered to be on a similar level to the top French teams that have dominated the silverware for the past four seasons.
The Bulls improved steadily in the URC after their early exit from the Champions Cup, where like the other SA teams they never made it out of the Pool phase, but were still well short of Leinster in the decider. Bulls coach Jake White was right when he said that it would require further use of the chequebook to close that gap, but of course it doesn’t stop there and White might even be contradicting himself when he says the game showed him he needs more Boks.
He does, but until the Boks playing in the SA URC teams also have an off-season such as Leinster do, there will be a tipping point when it comes to the number of top Boks you can have before it becomes counterproductive.
The Sharks are starting to realise this and it is why they are starting to talk about contracting from the bottom up, meaning placing greater emphasis on their youth feeder system, rather than focusing exclusively on spending big money on players who are physically and mentally taxed by being committed to a southern season at international level and a northern one at club level.
But as White said you are also in dream land if you think you can win a Champions Cup title with young players as if waving a magic wand. To win that competition, experienced, star players are necessary. And for those players to be worth what they are valued and to help drive success in Europe and the URC they need to be disentangled from the 12-month commitment to club and country.
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