With the Springboks’ 14-match season looming, a surprise exit from European cup competitions might just be the "blessing in disguise" Rassie Erasmus needs. Photo: Backpagepix
Image: Backpagepix
COMMENT
This past Sunday marked 90 days until the Springboks play their first match of the year, the Nations Cup opener at Ellis Park against England on July 4.
While three months seems a fair way away, it won’t seem like that to South Africa’s top players — they need no reminding that the month of June is taken up by the United Rugby Championship (URC) quarter-finals, semi-finals and final, and then it is straight into a 14-match Springbok itinerary that stretches, pretty much without a break, until the end of November.
South Africa’s involvement in the URC play-offs is set to be significant. With four rounds to go, the Stormers are second, the Lions fifth, the Bulls seventh, and the 10-placed Sharks are knocking on the door of the top eight.
The Sharks have focused heavily on making the top eight as a means of qualifying for next season’s Champions Cup — the team that contested the Challenge Cup playoff last week against Connacht was not their strongest — and with a bunch of Springboks coming back for the Sharks’ last four URC games, they could well complete a full house of SA teams in the URC quarter-finals.
Obviously, that SA representation will dwindle in the build-up to the final, but it is still going to be a busy June for many of the players on Rassie Erasmus’ radar.
What has made life easier for the players as they keep an eye on their workloads is the sudden disappearance of the SA teams in the Champions and Challenge Cups. In one fell swoop, the Sharks, Stormers, and Bulls fell out of the weekend's Round of 16, to join the Lions, who long ago were dumped out of the EPCR Challenge Cup.
If the Bulls and Sharks had won at the weekend, they would have stayed in Europe for this weekend’s Cup quarter-finals, and continued in Europe for another fortnight of URC fixtures, effectively meaning a month away from home.
Instead, they come home for a welcome break. And there will be more rest in the second half of May when the Cup semifinals and finals take place.
In some ways, the negative results in the Cup matches at the weekend are a positive for South African rugby. Players will get some rest, and being now in only one competition (the URC) means the focus can be sharply narrowed down. The SA teams are no longer juggling competitions and negotiating complicated flight schedules.
Also, the SA teams exit the Champions Cup with heads held high. No critics of South African rugby — and there are many in Europe and especially France — can accuse the Bulls and Stormers of disrespecting their Round of 16 opponents. They gave their games a full crack and on another day might have got the rub of the green and won.
Erasmus will have watched the weekend’s matches with interest, and he knows that in this year of relentless fixtures, the way the cards have fallen in the Cup competitions is a blessing in disguise.