NO PERFECT SOLUTION TO TOUR GAME IMPERFECTION
Early in my rugby writing life there was a controversy around a draw in the old Lion Cup knock-out competition that appeared to favour Louis Luyt’s Transvaal against Natal. The Durbanites kept being drawn to play the Johannesburg team, and they always had to travel, and when it happened for the umpteenth time there was a vehement reaction from the then scribe at the Natal Mercury.
There was a lot of support for my line from what would now be the KZN rugby community - everyone read newspapers in those days - and the upshot of it all was that a few weeks later I found myself flying together with the Natal Rugby Union president Keith Parkinson and the NRU General Manager Craig Jamieson - yes, the same Craig Jamieson who’d led the province to their famous victory two years earlier - to Johannesburg.
There to be schmoozed by the bigwigs at SAB, for there was no other way to put it. Big business took mainstream media criticism seriously in those days, and they didn’t like the look that had been portrayed in the Durban media.
What was the solution that was arrived at? I have no idea, I don’t think there was one. All I remember was that it was a damn fine lunch, worth flying for, which in my case says a lot. But what solution could be arrived at? It was just the luck of the draw.
Which was the question asked of me by the then Natal convenor of selectors Piet Strydom when, as was habit in those days, I popped into coach Ian McIntosh’s office after a Natal training session.
Strydom was present, as were from memory the other two selectors, Dick Cocks and Poenie Holm, and the general consensus was that I was right to have a go. Particularly Mac, who always sniffed a whiff of conspiracy whenever it looked like his team had been hard done by.
But Strydom, a level headed rugby man who sadly has now passed on, as for that matter have McIntosh and Holm, provided the voice of reason, “What is the solution, I agree with your criticism but what is the solution? You haven’t provided one.”
Those words stuck with me and they returned again when earlier this week I wrote in the supersport.com Talking Point about the curve balls that have to be faced down on several levels if the All Black tour games against the local URC clubs (I will return to the subject of this label later) are going to be competitive and meaningful.
To recap the argument, the South African commitment to the northern hemisphere season at club level means that the teams that face the All Blacks in the tour games, starting with the DHL Stormers in Cape Town next Friday night, are effectively being asked to play these games out of season.
By the time next week’s game kicks off to signal the start of Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry tour, the Stormers would have been back in training after their off-season break for just three weeks.
Given that they went two weeks deeper in the URC, and therefore started their break later, it will be a similar situation for the Vodacom Bulls when a week later they host the All Blacks at Loftus. The Durban clash with the Hollywoodbets Sharks falls in between those two games and their selection could be interesting given that they went out in the league phase, which they finished with a youthful, experimental team.
The Fidelity ADT Lions, who were vanquished in the quarterfinal round of the URC, only play the All Blacks after the first test on 22 August. So they might just about be at the point, at the end of August, when you are looking to play a pre-season game. But facing the All Blacks in a pre-season game is one hell of an undertaking!
No, the situation is far from perfect, and I can already see the headlines to stories penned by overseas scribes should the games be one-sided. They’d be similar to those that greeted the lopsided wins of the British and Irish Lions when they played the local teams back in 2021.
I think South African rugby has grown since then, but that might not show when the players who face the All Blacks are wiping off the off-season cobwebs.
But what is the solution? What would deliver proper tour games featuring battle hardened local sides? If there are solutions, they’d be quite radical ones, like scheduling this tour at a different time of year, meaning let it coincide with the Six Nations played in the northern hemisphere, when the local sides will be in season and there is a break in their URC/EPCR commitments.
We know the Kiwis would never agree to that for that is also really the solution to the conundrum around the Boks playing in the Castle Lager Rugby Championship in what should be their off-season. While Australia and Argentina are apparently prepared to countenance that, the New Zealanders aren’t.
KIMBERLEY WAS A TRICKY STOP ON 1996 TOUR
Another solution I’d consider but the organisers of the tour, who are committed to making as much money out of the tour as they possibly can and hence the exorbitant ticket prices at tour games, would have been to play the tour games against teams made up of players who are still in season now because they are playing in the Carling Currie Cup.
The team that pushed the All Blacks hardest when they last toured here was Griquas (they were just Griquas then, not Suzuki Griquas). In that game in 1996 in Kimberley, Griquas, who were coached on the sly by the then Bok coach Andre Markgraaff, held the All Blacks to an 18-all draw.
Whether the current Griquas team, who happen to be reigning Currie Cup champions, would give the All Blacks a go now is questionable, but there’d be nothing stopping the Griquas team from being an invitational team.
Those of us who are old enough and have long memories might remember the tough game that the WP League side (playing as the SA Rugby Football Federation Invitation team) gave the Lions in the buildup to the first test of the 1980 series.
Many of the League stalwarts who played for that team in their competition season played that day, but so did several bulky, experienced forwards, mostly from WP. The pack gave the Lions a torrid time on the way to a 15-6 defeat and if you don’t remember the game maybe this will cue your memory - the Lions prop Fran Cotton came off the field holding his chest and his tour ended there because of suspected heart trouble.
If Griquas, and for that matter the Cheetahs and the Pumas, were bolstered by members of the Bok squad who are in training, and therefore not out of season like the rank and file players at the URC clubs, they might give the All Blacks a similar experience to the one the Lions had in Stellenbosch in late May of 1980.
The problem of course is stadium capacity. The Griquas home ground doesn’t compare in size, and therefore ticket selling potential, with DHL Stadium, Hollywoodbets Kings Park, Loftus and Ellis Park.
But two games against proper provincial teams from the country areas boosted by a few invitational players and two games against national invitation teams, let’s say SA A and SA Barbarians, would avoid the problems that come with fielding URC teams against the All Blacks at a stage when they should just be starting their pre-seasons.
So there, I do have a solution after all, and it might just provide a boost for rugby populations in this country starved of rugby (an SA A game against the All Blacks in Gqeberha would be a sell-out). I say all this fully aware that the URC players, though they are likely to struggle with their match fitness, do want to have the experience of playing against the All Blacks.
DOUBLE COMMITMENT FOR CLUBS ON TOUR GAME WEEKENDS
Not long after I had penned my Talking Point tackling the subject of tour games a press release from the Bulls arrived in my inbox. It dealt with the last URC season and how the Bulls fared under new coach Johan Ackermann and the buildup to the next URC campaign that will start in September, but the main emphasis of the release appeared to focused on how seriously the Bulls are taking their meeting with the All Blacks at Loftus on 15 August.
It was the first such release around an All Black game issued by a local URC club - and there may be a reason for that.
If the URC clubs had a reasonable share of the gate for their games against the New Zealand tourists, they would be more active in the selling of those games, and perhaps, just perhaps, they might have jumped through more hoops to ensure their teams were ready for the challenge, although admittedly that is hard to do given that players do need their mandatory five week off-season complete rest.
But that is not the case, they are not profiting from the games against the All Blacks like they should be, and that may explain the relative inactivity of the marketing departments in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg.
In some ways the administrators and coaches at the URC clubs are between a rock and a hard place. They recognise that a big loss to the All Blacks could be damaging to their brand, and conversely the gains that could be made out of being competitive in those games, but at the same time, given that they haven’t set the ticket prices, will consider it unfair that there are social media posts that push the line “At these prices they better be fielding their best available teams”. It’s not the clubs setting the prices, and not the clubs that are profiting.
Actually, that term, “best available”, is also interesting when applied to what the URC clubs have signed themselves up for. I was reminded this week that when signing to RGR tour agreement the clubs pledged to field their “best available” teams, but they’ve also signed a similar agreement around the Currie Cup.
As it turns out, both the Stormers and Bulls will be playing Currie Cup games against the Free State Cheetahs the same weekend they host the All Blacks. In both instances, they are bound by “best available”.
But how far can your resources be stretched before they reach breaking point? The Stormers definitely won’t be fielding their Currie Cup team that lost 41-3 to the Boland Kavaliers the other day against the All Blacks, but at the same time if they are going to be competitive they may need some of those players. Ditto the Bulls.
There needed to be some conversation around this between the various parties but from what I understand there has been none. And that’s a problem.
“BEST AVAILABLE” OPEN TO INTERPRETATION
So what does “best available” mean. If the URC clubs stipulated that players who are not in season, and therefore are not battle hardened and match fit for a game against the All Blacks, are not available, I would happily support that argument.
The hit to the brand that might have come with fielding an understrength team would be a more temporary one than the hit that may be sustained later on, in their bread and butter part of the rugby year, meaning the URC and in the EPCR Champions Cup or Challenge Cup, if playing rugby now led to injuries or had other physiological impacts later on when the real judgement comes.
To me what a coach and his squad does during the off-season is of critical importance. It was their wise off-season endeavour that accounted for the Stormers’ much improved URC campaign in this most recently completed season to their previous one.
And having only eight fit players training with him in the last pre-season, which was really the fault of the Sharks’ recruitment department and not his, was effectively what cost John Plumtree his job at the Sharks.
The critics of the Stormers, Sharks, Bulls or Lions are not going to listen to the excuse “Well, we made sacrifices to well in a one-off game against the All Blacks” if any of those coaches find themselves with their backs against the wall when January arrives and we are heading into the business end of the season.
THE OTHER CLUBS ARE NOW GETTING WITH THE PROGRAM
The Sharks were the leaders when it came to the reality that the Currie Cup is now a development competition. It was that reality that led them ages ago to name their team participating in the domestic competition the Sharks XV. The Stormers and Bulls have now followed suit - the Stormers XXIII plays in the Currie Cup along with the Bulls XV.
The arrival of Johan Ackermann drove the change at the Bulls. The Bulls were quite arrogant when they included several URC players in their squad and they comprehensively beat WP and the Sharks XV, two teams on a distinct development mission, in their first two games of last Currie Cup season.
The cockiness of their coach post-match was noted by both the two coastal teams, so there was some mirth when after Ackermann’s arrival the selection rug that had previously been enjoyed through the availability of URC players was pulled out from under the Bulls.
Now, thankfully, the URC clubs all seem to be on the same page and the Currie Cup is being seen for what it is - a development competition. And that even to some extent now includes the Lions, who were always a bit behind before now in getting the memo but now appear to have got it.
BIG CALL BUT AHMED FACING ALL BLACKS IS A PROBABILITY
The inclusion of Markus Muller in the Stormers XXIII for their Currie Cup game against the Sharks XV this coming weekend was a pointer to there being another option open to John Dobson when he chooses his Stormers senior team for next Friday’s game against the All Blacks.
He doesn’t have to stick to players who haven’t played any rugby recently because of their URC commitments, he could back players who have been in action for the winning Junior Springbok team.
Muller’s selection to play Currie Cup is an indication he won’t be facing the All Blacks, but the absence of the prodigiously talented World Championship winning Yaqeen Ahmed from the Currie Cup side sets up the probability that he will be facing the Kiwis.
Making your senior Stormers debut against the All Blacks is one heck of a place to start, but Ahmed isn’t in the Currie Cup side and Jurie Matthee is injured and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu is with the Boks.
It all points to Ahmed wearing the No 10 against the All Blacks, and although he's just 19, which is incidentally the age Naas made his Northern Transvaal debut, why not?
If Rassie could choose Vusi Moyo, last year’s World Cup winning flyhalf, for the Boks at the age of 20, Dobson can certainly do the same with Ahmed for the Stormers. Few who saw Ahmed play at the World Junior Championship would enter into any debate about his ability.
THEY’RE NOT FRANCHISES ANYMORE
Okay, so why am I now calling the franchises clubs, or more specifically, URC clubs? Well, they should really be called international clubs, for they also play in the EPCR competitions, but they are no longer franchises.
The Stormers were a franchise in what we could call their genesis moment, when they were under the joint ownership of WP, SWD and Boland. But that is no longer the case, so they are no longer a franchise. And ditto the other three, who came into being towards the beginning of the Super Rugby era while under co-ownership of different unions.
None of the teams are aligned to unions anymore, so calling them provincial unions would be incorrect, and just calling them clubs would mean there’d be problems differentiating them from amateur clubs in their region - say Hamiltons, which is right next door to the Stormers’ home ground, or College Rovers or Collegians, who historically share the same Kings Park precinct with the Sharks.
So URC clubs, or international clubs (which draws in the Cheetahs), it is from now on. And I’m glad that is cleared up for earlier this week I referred to them as franchise, union and club all in the same story. It was driving me dilly.