CHAMPIONS CUP: French domination but two SA teams still alive

If you were to be brutally honest about the way the Investec Champions Cup is shaping this season and has done over the past few seasons, you could describe it as a knock-out version of the French Top 14 plus Leinster.

The Irish powerhouse snuck to a two point win over La Rochelle in one of the showpiece games of the third round on Sunday, but they had to depend heavily on former Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber’s impressive blitz defence system in order to do it.

Travelling away to La Rochelle is never easy, and the hosts would have won had it not been the way their best endeavours were suffocated by the Leinster defence.

With their narrow defeat and the quality of their performance, they sent out the message that they belong in the four next level teams that have a realistic chance of contesting for silverware in the deciding weeks - three French sides in themselves, Toulouse and Bordeaux Begles, plus Leinster.

Johann van Graan joined Nienaber in being another South African coach who got the better of French opposition at the weekend, with his Bath team proving an exception to an otherwise poor weekend for English teams in the competition.

But otherwise it was another round of French domination and it is French teams that stand in the way of a South African advance to the round of 16 when the final round of the pool phase is played this coming weekend.

All three of the local sides play against French sides - the Vodacom Bulls host Stade Francais at Loftus on Saturday afternoon, the DHL Stormers head to Paris to play Racing 92 that night and on Sunday the Hollywoodbets Sharks are in Bordeaux to face the imperious Bordeaux Begles. The latter two teams are still alive, the Bulls aren’t.

For the Pretoria team, their mid afternoon meeting with Stade is a dead rubber, but for Jake White’s team, in the throes of a four match losing sequence that matches the one experienced by the DHL Stormers before Christmas, there is a desperate need to win before they return to action in what is clearly their bread and butter competition, the Vodacom United Rugby Championship, with a highveld derby against the Emirates Lions the following weekend.

TOUGH MONTH FOR THE BULLS

It’s been a tough month for the Bulls, starting with their heavy defeat at the hands of Saracens in their opening Champions Cup game and extending through an unexpected home defeat to Northampton Saints before they lost their Durban URC derby to a depleted Hollywoodbets Shaks team.

Their defeat to Castres on Saturday night, even the margin of it, should have been expected. The Bulls went with an understrength side, signifying White’s decision to focus on the URC. What should have been a second string side was effectively more third string because of the injuries that the Bulls have had to contend with this season as they, like other teams have, pay the price for South African rugby’s ridiculous 12 month season.

White faces a tricky dilemma this week - Stade Francais are far from the strongest French side in the Champions Cup, and they probably challenge Castres, who very much look like a Griquas type team in the Top 14, to be the weakest.

But Stade are five points ahead of the last placed Bulls in their Pool, with the next worst side being on nine points and out of the reach of the Bulls.

So fifth place is the best the Bulls can achieve, and to do that they are going to have to win by a big score and deny the visitors a bonus point. Fifth will get them into the round of 16 of the EPCR Challenge Cup, but the question is - do they want that?

If the Bulls want to focus on the URC, maybe they don’t need another trip overseas, for the Champions Cup sides that drop into the lower tier competition all get to play away.

SIMILAR DILEMMA FOR RESURGENT STORMERS

There might be a similar dilemma for the Stormers, who thanks to their highly impressive win over Sale Sharks at DHL Stadium, now have a real chance of advancing to the Champions Cup round of 16.

That was not something they thought was possible when they lost to Toulon in Gqeberha in the first round, where in private conversation they admitted that they knew their chances of an advance were gone.

Stormers coach John Dobson probably summed up the attitude when after the rout of Sale he described the URC as “our day job”, and it is true that at this juncture of South Africa’s participation in European competitions, it is the URC that defines success or failure.

It might seem contorted thinking, but it s also important to finish in the top eight of the URC so you can qualify for the Champions Cup, which gets easier for South African sides next year as this country will then finally be full partners and that will mean that semifinals can be played at home should the teams get that far and be seeded high enough.

At this point semifinals are played in Europe regardless where you end up on the seeding list after the Pool phase.

SHARKS ARE PROBABLY THROUGH DESPITE DEFEAT

Mention of the seedings cues the Sharks, the South African version of the Sharks that is, who were seen as the most likely local team to do well but are now fighting for survival after failing to pick up even a bonus point in their showpiece game against Toulon.

The chances of the Sharks beating the Galactico team spearheaded by the darling of world rugby, scrumhalf Antoine Dupont, effectively evaporated on the eve of the game when it was confirmed that Eben Etzebeth was going to join three other important Sharks Springboks on the sidelines in Andre Esterhuizen, Lukhanyo Am and Aphelele Fassi.

Etzebeth and Esterhuizen are particularly important to the Sharks’ game, with the latter able to ensure that bad ball can be turned into good ball, and with that duo absent it was no surprise that the reigning champions were effectively able to keep their opponents at arms length in difficult conditions.

The loss didn’t hurt the Sharks in terms of their position in a particularly tough Pool 1, in the sense that they are still fourth, which means in the round of 16 qualification bracket heading into their final group game against Bordeaux Begles, who now top the Pool 1 log by one point thanks to Toulouse not getting a bonus point at Hollywoodbets Kings Park.

The Sharks are likely to hold onto that position because the two teams behind them on the log, Ulster and Exeter Chiefs, have been particularly poor and both have failed to register a log point in this season’s competition.

The Sharks have five points and a superior points differential, and by quite some distance, so they will have to lose to Bordeaux Begles in Bordeaux on Sunday by a huge margin if they are to be knocked out.

BORDEAUX HAVE BEEN IMPERIOUS

Bordeaux are going to be a formidable proposition for them, however, as the other Galactico team from the Top 14 has been in imperious form in Europe in this campaign, winning all their games by big margins.

As the Sharks were losing on Saturday, news came through that Bordeaux had again topped the 60 mark - this time away to Exeter Chiefs. To do that at Sandy Park is borderline freakish, even though the Chiefs are having a poor season.

So the two coastal side are very much alive, but the reality is that even if the two sides do manage to break the South African duck for the season against French sides, they will go into the round of 16 with poor seedings.

That means they will travel, which isn’t what they will want to do given the perils crossing the equator too many times in a season holds for their chances in the URC.

It was a mixed weekend for South Africa in the EPCR Challenge Cup - the Toyota Cheetahs left it late to beat Zebre in Amsterdam, their first win in three starts in the competition, while the Emirates Lions, who now look like they are heading for a cliff after starting their season so well, and may be paying now for taking the Currie Cup seriously, were outplayed by Montpellier.

Both teams have to win their final games, with the Cheetahs heading to Lyon and the Lions hosting the Dragons, if they want to play in the round of 16

Investec Champions Cup third round results:

Glasgow Warriors 29 Racing 92 19

DHL Stormers 40 Sale Sharks 0

Hollywoodbets Sharks 8 Toulouse 20

Exeter Chiefs 17 Bordeaux Begles 69

Munster 17 Saracens 12

Stade Francais 45 Northampton Saints 35

Castres 49 Vodacom Bulls 10

Leicester Tigers 38 Ulster 10

Toulon 33 Harlequins 21

La Rochelle 14 Leinster 16

Bristol Bears 35 Benetton 29