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TALKING POINT: Be competitive in Champions Cup or forget Europe

football15 April 2025 06:10
By:Gavin Rich
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Jake White © Getty Images

There hasn’t been the same level of discussion in the UK media this season about South Africa’s participation in the Investec Champions Cup that there was in the previous two and it was for good reason - the performances were generally so poor that the our teams were hardly noticed.

While last year at around about this time Vodacom Bulls director of rugby Jake White was the centre of attention as he was pilloried for taking an understrength squad to Franklin Gardens for a Champions Cup quarterfinal, this time around White was completely under the radar. As were the Bulls.

Because no-one really cares about the EPCR Challenge Cup except teams that might need it to get promoted to the more prestigious Champions Cup, like the Sharks did last year.

With Champions Cup status secure this time around, the Sharks didn’t need to win the Challenge Cup. And by sending a young side to their round of 16 Challenge Cup date with Lyon, they showed little appetite to relive the experience.

And understandably so, for this time around the Sharks were only in the Challenge Cup because they were knocked out of the Champions Cup. Like the other SA teams were.

BULLS DODGED A BULLET

The Bulls appeared to be taking the Challenge Cup more seriously than the Sharks, probably because they are in quite desperate need for some silverware for the Loftus trophy cabinet. But the reality is that the slow start that cost them victory in the quarterfinal against Edinburgh probably saw them dodge a bullet.

Given how intense the jockeying for position in the top four in the URC has become, the last thing that the Bulls needed at the start of May, the semifinal weekend, was another overseas trip. If it had the glory that comes with winning the Champions Cup at stake that would be different. 

The Challenge Cup carries minimal prestige and is effectively, as the name applies, just there to give teams not good enough for the Champions Cup something to play for.

That the local teams are not good enough to go beyond the group stage in the Champions Cup, something they did manage to do in the two previous seasons of SA’s participation, has to be a concern for the World Cup champion nation.

We saw on Sunday when Toulouse and Toulon fought out a quasi test match in a test match atmosphere at Stade Mayol just what a great competition the Champions Cup is.

There are two French teams in the last four and there’d probably have been more had two of the sides not had to bump each other in the quarterfinal round. France are shaping as the biggest challengers to South Africa’s RWC hegemony and while it is true that their teams are bolstered by overseas teams, that is less the case than it used to be.

SA PLAYERS LIFT FOR DERBIES

When the local teams play derbies against each other, particularly the north/south face off between the Stormers and Bulls, it does appear the players lift themselves to near test level. The Cape Town derby between the sides had everything.

But when it comes to big games featuring overseas teams, failure is becoming frequent, with big teams winning in SA more than SA teams ever win big games overseas.

Make no mistake, the travel obstacles play a role in that, and in the failures to register on any radar in the EPCR competitions. The local teams had to sacrifice overseas games in the Champions Cup in December so they could be at optimum in crucial derbies over the Christmas period.

Stormers coach John Dobson, who arguably presided over the best Champions Cup performance by a SA team this year, that being the impressive 40-0 annihilation of a fully charged Sale Sharks team, spoke about a Groundhog Day effect when his team opened with defeat to Toulon in Gqeberha.

Dobson acknowledged in private that losing at home meant the Stormers’ chances of doing well in the competition, which can only happen if you secure home playoff games, was in tatters. Publicly though he asked if the argument that being knocked out of Europe would help his team’s quest to make the URC top eight and Champions Cup qualification made any sense.

As in what is the point of making the Champions Cup if every year when you get there you sacrifice games so that you can make the following year’s competition through the URC.

Dobson made a good point. It is a cycle that in time will become pointless if at some stage the local sides don’t seriously start becoming contenders for Champions Cup silverware. When that happens, the overseas pundits and fans will start whingeing again.

But it’s better than being completely off the radar and where the performances can be summed up by the words of an old Alison Moyet song, “Invisible”.

At the moment it is like the SA teams “are not really there”. That needs to change. If the big local interest in next year’s quarterfinal round in the EPCR is again on a Challenge Cup fixture and not a Champions Cup showdown, then we will have to ask if being there has any point to it at all.

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