CHAMPIONS CUP: Going deep will help SA’s future challenges

If there was one thing that the Vodacom Bulls’ heavy defeat to Leinster in a different competition did it was confirm that hopes of a South African team winning the Investec Champions Cup in the second season of trying might be a bit unrealistic.

You get the sense from particularly what Bulls director of rugby Jake White has said when talking about the elite European competition that both he and his DHL Stormers counterpart John Dobson have the attitude that what happens now is about building the experience that will inspire the confidence that will bolster more realistic challenges in the future.

White has often spoken about the wide chasm in the wage bills between particularly the top French teams and the South African sides. And he is right. The Leinster team that beat his side 47-14 in Dublin in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship last weekend is an Ireland shadow international team. Toulon are also far closer to being a replica of France than either SA teams are to being the Boks. And La Rochelle have the financial resources to field a team that has France internationals intermingled with overseas Galactico stars.

LA ROCHELLE WOULD COMPETE INTERNATIONALLY

All three of the above-mentioned sides are of international standard, and Dobson was on the mark when he said earlier in the week that La Rochelle would comfortably hold in the top tier of nations on the World Rugby rankings if their business was international rugby rather than club rugby.

The South African sides, with many of the top Springboks playing overseas and the youngsters still needing to develop and grow to their level, aren’t quite at that level yet, as last Friday night at the RDS Arena showed. Perhaps a caveat needs to be added to that point though - they aren’t at that level when they play those teams away. The Bulls did beat Bordeaux Begles, the form team of the early part of the season, at Loftus. And the Stormers beat the European champions, La Rochelle, in Cape Town in December.

On their home grounds, as their records at their respective fortresses of Loftus and DHL Stadium suggest, the Bulls and the Stormers can beat anyone on a given day when everything clicks. And both the round of 16 games played by local teams this weekend are at home.

French teams are unpredictable, but the Bulls should maintain their fortress by beating Lyon, who they lost to by a solitary point with a mix and match selection in Lyon in the pool stages.

For the Stormers, Saturday’s challenge is a much more formidable one than the one faced by their arch local rivals. Beating La Rochelle once was quite an achievement, one that was perhaps not fully appreciated by everyone at the time as it does appear the Champions Cup, which really is a huge competition in global rugby terms, is taking time to catch on in South Africa.

But beating them twice consecutively in the same season, even at the DHL Stadium, will require a different level of effort and if it happens it will be a different level of achievement. And it will be huge for the Stormers in terms of giving them the experience and confidence if their time to contest a final in this competition does come in a couple of seasons.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IS WHAT MAKE IT UNLIKELY

The reason we’re looking ahead when it comes to the South African quest for glory in this competition can be explained by what comes next for the Stormers if they do win on Saturday. Their opponents in the quarterfinal round if they do get that far will be either Leinster away or Leicester Tigers in Cape Town. The chances of it being Tigers that win Sunday night’s Groundhog Day repeat of so many previous Champions Cup playoff games between the teams are almost zero.

It would be a good experience for the Stormers to go to Dublin to play a quarterfinal. But as we saw from the Bulls’ failure there seven days ago, their chances of winning won’t be great. And then once you get to the semifinal round, the South African sides have to travel to the northern hemisphere regardless of their ranking. The Stormers, if they get that far, will play at The Stoop in London if they are deemed to have home ground advantage. The final of course is at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The Bulls’ home ground would be Bristol’s Ashton Gate.

Of course if the Stormers knock over La Rochelle and then Leinster there will be two big teams gone from the competition, but it is still just so unlikely that the Stormers’ belief that they can go all the way, something hinted at by something Damian Willemse said this week, will turn out to be more than a pipe-dream.

SUCCESS IN ROUND OF 16 WILL GROW THE LEARNINGS

Yet it has to be the ultimate goal of all the South African sides competing in the URC to one day win the Champions Cup, and in that sense going deep now could be invaluable for both the Bulls and Stormers. Both coaches like talking about learning experiences, and that was what last week’s loss at the RDS Arena was for White’s charges, and the further they go this year the more the learnings will grow for the future.

Right now South Africa’s best chance for silverware in the European Cup competitions is the Hollywoodbets Sharks. They are playing in the secondary EPCR Challenge Cup, with the final set for the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium the night before the Champions Cup final. They should comfortably deal with Zebre in their round of 16 clash on Sunday, and then it will be another home game in the quarterfinals.

The Durbanites look like they are finally picking up some momentum, so they have an excellent chance of making it at least to the semifinals, and have enough World Cup winners on their books to make that count in the deep end of a Cup competition.

Other things to watch in the Round of 16

It’s been a couple of years since English teams dominated the Champions Cup - there was a time when sides from the Premiership won four out of five editions of the competition - but there’s been a bit of a resurgence this year. There are six teams from the Premiership in the last 16, more than either the URC or the French Top 14, who both have five teams each.

The smart money in England is on Saracens to go the furthest, but that is based mainly on their big recent win over Harlequins in front of more than 60 000 people at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Since they they have been well beaten by Northampton Saints and thus continue to be inconsistent.

Saracens play Bordeaux Begles in one of six games to be played in this round of sudden death that are repeats of pool games (the organisers really do need to rethink the competition format). Both South African games are also repeats. But in the Saracens case they were comprehensively thrashed by Bordeaux, losing 55-14. Can they reverse that on Saturday? Some of the British pundits think they can. Saracens are better now than they were in December, while Bordeaux aren’t quite as high flying as they were.

Two other big games to make sure you watch are the Harlequins’ home game against Glasgow Warriors on Friday night, if only because both teams are primed to play attacking rugby, and Northampton Saints are hosting URC champions Munster, who they shocked at Thomond Park in the pool stages.

As mentioned earlier, the Leicester challenge should be ended by Leinster even though the Tigers have a clutch of World Cup winning Boks in their ranks, while Johann van Graan’s Bath have a definite chance even though they are away to Exeter Chiefs in an English derby.

Previews for the two SA team Champions Cup fixtures

Vodacom Bulls v Lyon (Pretoria, Saturday 13.30)


If this game was being played two months ago, the lunch time kick-off would definitely be a massive advantage for the Bulls. It can get quite hot in Lyon in summer, anyone who has been there in July or August will vouch for that, but Lyon are coming out of a severe northern hemisphere winter. And Pretoria is at altitude. At this time of the year it isn’t quite the same level of advantage for the Bulls, with a high of only 22 degrees expected. Where the kick-off time might prove fortuitous is that it should mean the game avoids being impacted by the predicted thunderstorms that usually happen later in the day.

The Bulls would have beaten Lyon had Jaco van der Walt nailed a penalty a few minutes from the end in the game in Lyon in December. Last year the Bulls beat Lyon narrowly in Pretoria and then lost quite heavily in France (last year’s format was played to a home and away pool format) so you shouldn’t bet your house on the result. It should be noted though that the Bulls were very understrength for that first round game in 2022/23. They won’t be this time, and generally Jake White appears to be taking the Champions Cup more seriously this time.

Prediction: Bulls to recover from Dublin by winning by 12.

DHL Stormers v La Rochelle (Cape Town, Saturday 16.00)

Oh, those fraught nerves! Stormers fans will be thinking that after watching their team claw back from the cusp of oblivion to beat Ulster last week, and the La Rochelle game in the pool stages of this competition was as fraught. The Stormers produced Houdini acts in both, and clearly know how to win the close ones, so should not be written off. It also needs to be noted that coach John Dobson felt his team played the wrong game the last time they played La Rochelle - and won. So what happens if they play the right game?

The extent of La Rochelle’s strength should not be underestimated though, and the Stormers won’t have the summer heat, which was ridiculous in the pool game, as an advantage this time. Kick-off is at 4pm on a day where the expected high in Cape Town is only 23 degrees. You also fancy that La Rochelle would have learned quite a lot about the Stormers last time out, and while it also works the other way around, and both teams have more momentum than they had in December, having to play La Rochelle twice in the same season just feels like the Stormers have drawn the short straw. They were drawn into a war of attrition up front last time but there best chance of winning might be the X-factor players they could field. If the passes stick like they didn’t against Ulster, a Stormers trip to Dublin next week is not impossible.

Prediction: La Rochelle to win by 7

Fulll list of Investec Champions Cup last 16 fixtures

Friday, 5 April

Harlequins v Glasgow Warriors (21.00)

Saturday, 6 April

Vodacom Bulls v Lyon (13.30)

Exeter v Bath (16.00)

DHL Stormers v La Rochelle (16.00)

Bordeaux Begles v Saracens (18.30)

Leinster v Leicester Tigers (21.00)

Sunday, 7 April

Northampton Saints v Munster (13.30)

Toulouse v Racing 92 (16.00)

EPCR Challenge Cup last 16 fixtures

Friday, 5 April

Gloucester v Castres (21.00)

Saturday, 6 April

Clermont v Toyota Cheetahs (13.30)

Benetton v Emirates Lions (18.30)

Edinburgh v Bayonne (21.00)

Ospreys v Sale Sharks (21.00)

Sunday, 7 April

Montpellier v Ulster (13:30)

Hollywoodbets Sharks v Zebre (16.00)

Pau v Connacht (18.30)