Ken Borland

Jake White has been able to choose his returning Springboks for Saturday’s tricky United Rugby Championship clash with Cardiff at Loftus Versfeld, but he knows management of his playing resources is going to be crucial as the Bulls head into a busy Christmas month of rugby.

It is unchartered territory for the Bulls, and all the South African URC franchises, as they are simply not used to playing rugby at this time of year. Last December the Omicron variant of Covid put the tournament on hold, but this year the Bulls will visit the Stormers two days before Christmas and will be playing the Sharks in Durban on the last day of the year.

After taking on Cardiff, the Bulls will make their European Professional Club Rugby bow by hosting Olympique Lyon and then visiting the Exeter Chiefs in the Champions Cup. But instead of perhaps resting them after the Springboks’ end-of-year tour, White has named flank Marco van Staden, flyhalf Johan Goosen, wing Canan Moodie and fullback Kurt-Lee Arendse in the starting XV to take on Cardiff.

“It’s wonderful for us to have the Springboks back, it gives us a good team to take on a very good Cardiff side, who have beaten both the Stormers and the Sharks,” White said on Friday.

“Those Boks have done well, pulling off a massive win over England at Twickenham and they will be on a high. That injection of really talented players has brought energy to training, which spreads across the group.

“I don’t want to put the handbrake on that, we want to continue that, the positive vibe, we must embrace it. But we can’t keep the same team for the next six-to-nine weeks, we have to be at our best.

“I understand the enormity of the Champions Cup, and you need a squad that is big and good enough. It’s going to be unique for us, going from 38° in Pretoria to -2 and snowing in Exeter,” White said.

Assistant coach Pine Pienaar spoke on Tuesday about Cardiff’s strengths and getting the balance right in the Bulls selection, and White named a physical loose trio on Friday with Van Staden and Cyle Brink returning to the starting back row.

But against the Cardiff side who showed how brilliant they are in terms of game-management in thrashing the Sharks last weekend, there will be much focus on Goosen’s return to the No.10 jersey, with the Bulls hoping he will be at his adroit best.

“I’d like to play Johan as much as possible and I think we’ll see over the next six weeks that the more he plays the better he’ll become,” White said.

“He was out for a long time and he played in different positions, in and out of the team, which was not ideal for him. But he now has a long list of games coming up, we’ll need to manage him and get him playing well again.”

Bulls: Kurt-Lee Arendsti, David Kriel, Cornal Hendricks, Harold Vorster, Canan Moodie, Johan Goosen, Zak Burger, Elrigh Louw, Cyle Brink, Marco Van Staden, Ruan Nortje (c), Ruan Vermaak, Mornay Smith, Johan Grobbelaar, Gerhard Steenekamp. Bench – Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Simphiwe Matanzima, Francois Klopper, Janko Swanepoel, Nizaam Carr, Embrose Papier, Chris Smith, Lionel Mapoe.

Rugby fans who have had enough of the current fatigue-inducing set-up will be eagerly anticipating Christmas and the expected announcement by Sanzar of a new SuperRugby format from 2016. But what they find in their stocking might still leave them unimpressed because Sanzar are unlikely to go the most obvious route of two pools of nine, eight matches home and away and semi-finals and a final.

Because the Southern Kings had such a dramatic impact on rugby in the Eastern Cape, certainly in terms of crowd figures, the South African Rugby Union (Saru) seem to have accepted that they can no longer leave such a massive region out in the cold even though they lost the promotion/relegation series to the Lions. And Argentina, full Sanzar partners now, look set to be rewarded with a place in SuperRugby as well, expanding the competition to 17 teams. Judging by the noises coming out of New Zealand and Australia, some sort of Japanese involvement is also being strongly considered to make it an even 18.

But the same Australian demands that impacted so heavily on the previous broadcasting agreement, which brings in all the money and therefore decides the format, seem set to ensure common sense does not apply. In order to sustain the ailing code of rugby union in Australia, they want their own conference, even if they have to share it with some New Zealand teams.

So the three proposals that Sanzar are considering are to keep the status quo (yes, many stakeholders, most of them living on a big island, actually think the current format is great), to split into South African and Australasian conferences, or to expand the competition even more and include other Asian teams, and the USA and Canada as well.

It would appear the two-conference system has been most positively received by Saru, and hopefully their negotiators will show much more skill when Sanzar meet in Sydney next week than the muppets who negotiated the previous deal. That could mean six South African franchises, which play each other home and away, making 10 fixtures. If the Australasian conference is split into two pools, with Japan in one and Argentina in the other, then they, too, could play 10 round-robin matches. The idea is then for the top six or eight teams across the conferences to play in the finals. If six teams go through and play each other, that’s five more matches. A semi-final and a final would then mean a maximum of 17 games per team – much cleaner, much simpler and less of a slog than SuperRugby is at the moment for all concerned.

What is vital is that Sanzar consult the players, on whom they rely to sell their product. There is a strong suggestion that the current exodus of players from the southern hemisphere to Europe is not just because of the power of the euro, but also because they are on their last legs due to the unceasing intensity and quantity of rugby Sanzar has foisted on them.

Bulls captain Pierre Spies, one of many on the injured list after the prolonged SuperRugby campaign, is pegging his hopes on change. “I’d really like to see the competition end before the international season. That three-week break for the internationals in June is a waste. I’d like to see all the focus on SuperRugby, get that done with and then give all the teams three or four weeks to prepare for the Tests. We could then finish the Rugby Championship at the end of October and either go back to our franchises or prepare for the end-of-year tour. I’d prefer there to be one global schedule and to finish SuperRugby in one go. That would also give all the teams one extra bye,” Spies told Daily Maverick on Thursday.

There does seem to be growing agreement on the sense of having one global rugby season. The International Rugby Players’ Association has come out in favour of it and even Sanzar CEO Greg Peters has said it makes sense. “The idea of moving June to July, in a Sanzar context, certainly holds a lot of appeal, for a lot of reasons,” Peters told The Herald Sun. “We could complete the SuperRugby season without a break, which is something in an ideal world we would want to do. Then you would move straight into the international program, have a short break, the Rugby Championship, short break, and then the Spring Tours. We would certainly be interested in sitting down with the northern unions and getting their views about whether it would work. And obviously we are interested in the views of the players’ associations as well.”

The Currie Cup Premier Division also looks set to change, with a new eight team format apparently agreed to in principle by the Saru executive committee, just two years after they went to great lengths to justify a cut to six teams. The phrase “political expediency” immediately springs to mind, but the thought of the Kings and the Pumas, who have dominated the First Division in recent times and are based in the rapidly-growing centre of Nelspruit, competing at the top table does have appeal.

The administrators sit in the boardrooms and make the decisions over lavish lunches, changing tune according to their own vested interests, but it is the players who have to go out, put their bodies on the line, and make these formats work.

“I’ve only been playing SuperRugby for six years and I’m struggling to get on the field now,” says Springbok star Francois Steyn, who has been out of action since May after two operations for compartment syndrome in the leg – an over-use injury.

“In South African rugby, we all worry about saying something wrong and stepping on someone’s toes, so I should probably keep my mouth shut. But it’s all about bringing the fans out and less rugby is probably better. Then the top players can play for longer. At this rate, if you play for 10 years, you’re a lucky guy.”

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-08-30-quo-vadis-superrugby/#.WKrl_2997IU