MARK KEOHANE | An all-South African URC final would be a dream for fans, a nightmare for Rassie

Wins by the Bulls and Stormers in the United Rugby Championship semifinals on Saturday would make for a dream all-South African final on June 20 in Cape Town.

But the dream of such a club final for South African fans would be Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus’s nightmare.

Erasmus obviously wants South Africa’s clubs to do well and a South African team to win the title, but from a national perspective he would want to get his best players into the national training base without having to watch them beat each other up in a club final.

There are few tougher club showdowns than when the Bulls play the Stormers. It is north versus south and players from each side never hold back, even if the potential sacrifice is bodily harm, injury and the possibility of missing Test matches.

The north versus south rivalry and the desire to win such matches are ingrained in the psyche of the South African players.

Neither South African team is expected to win the semifinals away from home. Glasgow, who finished the league season as the top-ranked team, are the bookies’ favourites to beat the Bulls, who ended the regular season in fourth place.

The two teams met in the last 16 of the Investec Champions Cup in Glasgow and the hosts edged the Bulls in a titanic struggle. Only one point separated the teams with two minutes to play.

The difference on Saturday is that the match is not being played at Glasgow’s Scotstoun ground but at Murrayfield, home to the Scottish national team.

Johan Ackermann and John Dobson, coaches of the Bulls and Stormers, will be nervous, but their reasons will be very different from Erasmus’s jitters.

Murrayfield is the preferred venue because of the crowd capacity, more than 60,000, whereas Scotstoun takes 8,000.

The match is also played on grass and not artificial carpeting, as is the case at Scotstoun.

Defending champions Leinster are 13-plus point favourites to beat the Stormers. Leinster finished the regular season in second place, with the Stormers in third.

The two teams met in the opening round of the season in Cape Town and the Stormers won 35-0. Very few of Leinster’s Test players were involved and only a handful of players from that match will play on Saturday.

The Stormers, indifferent in form towards the end of the season, have been a mixture of awesome and awful.

They were exactly that combination in beating Cardiff 44-21 in Cape Town in last week’s quarterfinal, while Leinster’s full-strength match 23 crushed South Africa’s Lions 59-10.

Glasgow fought hard to see off Connacht in a home quarterfinal and the Bulls were outstanding in whipping Ireland’s Munster 45-14 in Pretoria.

Both South African teams are on a high from their winning margins in the quarterfinals and both will believe they can win.

For me, a stronger case can be made for the Bulls. There is enough quality in the match 23 and consistency in performance for there to be conviction in any belief of a winning outcome.

I am not convinced the conviction is as strong within the Stormers group, given their inconsistency this season, the unavailability of some big-name players and their defensive vulnerability against the best attacking teams.

I have the Bulls to win and the Stormers to be beaten, which would make for a repeat of last season’s final between the Bulls and Leinster in Dublin.

Leinster won the final 32-7.

Johan Ackermann and John Dobson, coaches of the Bulls and Stormers, will be nervous, but their reasons will be very different from Erasmus’s jitters.

The number of Springboks injured and unavailable for the start of the Test season is already in double figures and Erasmus has lost some of his top dogs before the international season’s first kick-off.

He will be praying for no injuries from the semifinals, but I am sure he will also be praying for respectful performances but not necessarily winning South African ones if it means he does not have to endure the anguish of watching 20 of his national squad players go to battle in a final on the same day he fields a match 23 to play the Barbarians.