In the first year the Stormers won the United Rugby Championship (URC). In year two of South Africa’s participation up north, the Sharks won the Challenge Cup. Now, what would it take for a South African team to win the coveted Champions Cup in year three?
It would take a Test-match squad and some fine back-up players. Toulouse and Leinster, finalists in a breathtaking 102-minute spectacle at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in north London a week ago, produced a Test-match classic, in the guise of a club final.
The two squads are without doubt the strongest in the Champions Cup and the two best teams across the URC, France’s Top 14 and the English Premiership.
The biggest double, which has been done so rarely, is winning the Premiership and the Champions Cup, the Top 14 and the Champions Cup and the URC and the Champions Cup.
Both squads are loaded with internationals who play for France and Ireland, respectively, and both have recruited very strategically with foreign international players to compensate for those fixtures where their Test players are not available.
This is the bridge that South Africa’s URC quartet — the Bulls, Lions, Sharks and Stormers — must navigate if they are to win the Champions Cup. The travel, combined with the quality of opposition, makes it seem an impossibility for a South African team to juggle two competitions and triumph in the Champions Cup.
The Challenge Cup, for all the fanfare in South Africa last weekend, is not the Champions Cup. It is a title for the bridesmaid. I am not raining on the Sharks’ parade but providing context to the occasion. The biggest double, which has been done so rarely, is winning the Premiership and the Champions Cup, the Top 14 and the Champions Cup and the URC and the Champions Cup.
In the three seasons of the Champions Cup, no side has done the double, which has as much to do with the most demanding league fixture, in terms of travel.
Premiership clubs and Top 14 clubs like Toulon, with its seven-strong super Springboks a decade ago, Saracens and Toulouse have enjoyed the luxury of a squad system with so many quality players that they could compete in both tournaments.
The Bulls are building a squad capable of getting there. The Lions haven’t started with their build of such a squad and the Stormers are three marquee players short of being Champions Cup contenders, while sustaining the URC league challenge.
The Sharks have the most potent run-on XV, with four of their tight five World Cup-winning Springboks. Their reserve depth is lacking, which is why they had won just four from 17 in the URC leading into their successful Challenge Cup title win.
Springboks strongman Eben Etzebeth, inspirational and powerful against Gloucester in the Sharks Challenge Cup title win, spoke eloquently and accurately of the occasion and the benefits of automatic qualification into the Champions Cup.
Etzebeth previously played for Toulon in the Champions Cup. He said South African rugby supporters haven’t yet appreciated the magnitude of the Champions Cup.
Squad depth, in quality, is what defines the very best.
Take Leinster as the primary example. They had 18 current Irish internationals in their match 23 of the Champions Cup final. They had one Springbok and one Wallaby and just three non-internationals in the final. They had two of Ireland’s best forwards coming off the bench in the final 20 minutes.
Toulouse were loaded with French internationals and a sprinkling of foreign internationals.
What allows Leinster and Toulouse to make a double title challenge is how they manage their best players. Leinster’s key playmaker James Gibson-Park, for example, started in just three of five matches in the URC league campaign of 18 but he won’t miss a minute in the play-offs.
Stormers playmaker Manie Libbok, as just one example, started in 11 of 18 URC matches, eight Test matches and four Champions Cup matches.
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