TALKING POINT: URC franchises must be cleverer this “off-season”

You have to put quotation marks around off-season when you are referring to South African rugby because there isn’t one. The rugby business doesn’t stop for a break, with the international players involved in the Castle Lager Rugby Championship while the unions have a Carling Currie Cup to contend with.

It would have been wise to move the Currie Cup into a slot where it didn’t fall in the off-season. The URC franchises would profit by having a secondary competition where players who aren’t being used in the first choice team can get game time and play themselves into form.

DHL Stormers coach John Dobson wouldn’t have been as needful of giving his alternate players a run towards the end of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship season, something that might well have cost him momentum heading into the quarterfinal in Glasgow, had the domestic season been played simultaneously.

The Vodacom Cup was a development competition and, like it or not, that is what the Currie Cup now has to be. It is when you see it as that, and don’t see it as something else, that it has it’s place and can just about fit into the South African rugby eco-system in its current slot.

EVERYTHING MUST REVOLVE AROUND URC

What the URC franchises need to do, particularly now that a Club World Cup has been placed on the horizon, is focus all their efforts on building the depth necessary to compete in the international competitions. If there are still unions aligned to the franchises who are thinking that the Currie Cup trophy is something to chase they should look back at the lessons of this past season.

The Hollywoodbets Sharks won the Currie Cup and they clinched it in what was an exciting final. But when the critics started attacking the Sharks in the middle of the URC season for being under-achievers, did the fact that they were reigning Currie Cup champions and John Plumtree a Currie Cup winning coach blunt the criticism? It didn’t.

The Sharks did box cleverly in last year’s Currie Cup, they did exactly what the other franchises should have done. They didn’t call themselves the Sharks but the Sharks XV, had a completely different playing group from the URC with a heavy accent on youth.

Sharks director of rugby Neil Powell told supersport.com a few weeks ago that in the sifting process at youth level the aim is to develop young players to be ready to play in the Currie Cup at the age of 21. Those who don’t make it are dropped from the program.

Nick Hatton was the obvious benefactor from the policy and his captaincy for one so young was outstanding as he led the Sharks from a horrible start to ending in the playoff placings. He was rewarded with a place in the Sharks URC squad, as did others, such as the goalkicking hero from the recent shoot out against Munster, Bradley Davids. Jurenzo Julius also used the competition as his stepping stone to playing URC.

But while Plumtree only took over as coach from JP Pietersen at the end of the competition so that the games could be used as pre-season preparation for the URC, even they will admit that by doing so well they created a curve ball for themselves.

Plumtree didn’t expect his team to prevail in the domestic semifinal in Pretoria, in which case his men would have had a two week break before the start of the URC. But the competitive juices took over and they won a 100 minute extra-time thriller and then dug deep again to win in the final.

The physical and emotional energy expended in those weeks came back to bite the Sharks when they started their URC campaign by going on tour.

Plumtree reflected later that the late effort put into winning the old trophy did cost him then. Had the Sharks done better in the early weeks of the URC season, they might well have finished above the Bulls, and been hosting the semifinal they lost at the weekend.

LIONS’ BIG FADE WAS EXPECTED

The team they beat in the final, the Lions (Emirates Lions in the URC), were the biggest local failures in the URC this past season, and it would not have surprised the other coaches I spoke to during the time they were topping the Currie Cup log by ploughing so many of their URC resources into the domestic competition.

They started the URC season brilliantly but there was always the thought - “It will come back to bite them later.” And it did. They won some games to keep their hopes alive, but they played the last few months like a team that had run out of fuel and could only press the accelerator briefly.

If the Lions approach the Currie Cup this season like they did last year, put your money on them bombing again in the next URC. They don’t have the depth to win the Currie Cup and also do well in the URC, let alone think of one day competing in the Champions Cup.

Western Province appeared to put themselves under a bit of pressure early in last year’s Currie Cup campaign, and in my view John Dobson made a big mistake by coaching WP. He should have handed the reins to someone else.

The good news is that the penny appears to have dropped and he won’t be coaching the Currie Cup, and from what I am hearing there won’t be much overlap when it comes to players who also play in the URC this time around.

Even some players who didn’t play much in the URC, or like Vernon Matongo, who only became regulars later in the competition, will be getting a proper offseason this year and will only be introduced at a stage when the Currie Cup can be used as a pre-season exercise for the URC.

BOSSES MUST LOSE EGO OVER CURRIE CUP

The key of course is for the WP bosses to lose any ego and for the WP fans to understand the role the Currie Cup now plays. There should not be any expectation for Province to add to their record number of Currie Cup trophies. It just isn’t the same competition anymore.

Ditto the Vodacom Bulls, although the Pretoria franchise/union is arguably the one that has the depth to compete in the Currie Cup without it necessarily impacting their URC challenge. But even they last November/December went through a bit of an injury crisis that may have been Currie Cup related.

Everything for the URC franchises has to be directed at that competition and, for those who are there, doing better in next year’s Champions Cup. That means all URC players must get a proper offseason and a proper pre-season, with the Currie Cup having its place in being a producer of new URC players like Hatton, Davids and Jonathan Roche, who made his Champions Cup debut this season off his performances in last year’s domestic competition.