Bulls eight-flight nightmare schedule for Champions Cup quarterfinal

The Vodacom Bulls may be the only surviving South African franchise in the Investec Champions’ Cup, but they face a nightmare travel scenario to even get to their quarterfinal match-up with leading English side Northampton.

After Director of Rugby Jake White complained about the lack of planning ahead of the quarterfinal, his worst fears were confirmed as the Bulls head to England in no less than eight different flights, as the squad split up amid the lack of seats for the trip.

The nightmare scenario sees some players fly overnight on British Airways, while others will go via Frankfurt, Paris, Doha, Dubai, Amsterdam, Zurich and even Birmingham to get to their training base in Northampton.

And the terrible travelling schedule has played havoc with their preparations, as the team tried their best to finalise their game plan before heading their separate ways on Tuesday afternoon and evening.

The travel chaos had a further knock on effect as the team will need to travel on eight different airlines back to South Africa, arriving late Monday in different spurts for their next Vodacom United Rugby Championship game against defending champions Munster.

The net effect is that the team can only train on Thursday in England and lose Monday as a training day on their way back.

“It’s not ideal,” White said before the team’s departure on Tuesday. “I’ve said it before that if you are in a high performance sport and you want to be competitive, there aren’t many sporting teams that would leave on eight different airlines on a Tuesday evening to play a Saturday night game.

“For whatever reason and I’m sure the powers that be will sort it out, but it isn’t what was expected. We were sold that it is an overnight flight and that is why we are playing in Europe.

“Two weeks ago we went to Leinster and it took us 28 hours to get to Dublin and 27 hours to get back. Whether we like it or not, it comes at a cost - whether we fly business class or not. And we are very fortunate, our board pays for business class for the starting 23, which is a fantastic gesture on their behalf and it is a bonus.

“But no sporting team flies 28 hours with eight different airplanes. Some land at 9, some land at 2. If you are talking about a competition where you want to be the best in the world, that doesn’t add up.

“And I’m not going to stop saying. If we want to be the best we need to get those things right.”

This has left White in a quandary, especially with the different arrivals. For instance, while the Bulls have managed to get 8 players on an overnight BA flight, and these seats will go to the majority of the starting line-up, the rest are split up in interesting ways. Six players fly out on Lufthansa, five on Air France, five on KLM, five on Qatar and four on Emirates.

Then one player flies out on Virgin Atlantic, while four go economy class via Zurich on Swiss Air to Birmingham.

As if this isn’t a logistical nightmare in itself, the Bulls need to arrange eight different shuttles to get them to their hotel base as well.

“We leave Tuesday. In an ideal world I would have loved to leave on Wednesday night and land on Thursday, and been able to prepare Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday,” White explained.

“When you leave on Tuesday, and guys are sore after a tough game on the weekend, it is difficult. People assume that because the score was 59-19 it was an easy game, but those games can sometimes be a tougher fixture than winning 15-10. Monday they are a bit sore, and Tuesday you try and do as much prep as you can. You get there Wednesday and you can’t have two teams train each other because you don’t have so many players on Tour.”

White referenced Leinster’s decision to send a second string side to face the Bulls last year so they could prepare for their Champions’ Cup final against La Rochelle - a team that got beaten by 60 points at Loftus.

“Leinster sent a team that we beat by 60 points - and they have 30-something internationals, and they had to do that in order to give themselves a chane to win two competitions. We’re talking about a club that has invested years and years into Academy development and producing Irish internationals.

“Even they had to juggle, We can only manage as best we can what is given to us. And what is given is a short week, Tuesday fly, Thursday limited training, Monday sore and a lot of guys have niggles. And it is on the back of Dragons away, Leinster away, 28 hours travel, Lyon at home.

“It is an accumulative amount of fixtures and travel.”

The Bulls will name their squad on Friday for the fixture, which kicks off at 9pm on Saturday night (CAT, GMT+2)