The league stages of the United Rugby Championship (URC) will wrap this weekend and as is customary at this stage, few things are cast in stone. One of them, as is also customary, is that Leinster will again top the charts but the dogfight for second and the minor placings remain very much unresolved.
The Sharks, Bulls and Connacht occupy positions eight, seven and six respectively and though they are all expected in the quarterfinals of the URC, their position in the Champions Cup is yet to be confirmed.
The normal avenue to earn a spot among the 24 Champions Cup qualifiers is finishing in the top eight in the URC, the English Premiership and the French Top 14. The Champions Cup and Challenge Cup winners are also guaranteed spots but they tend to emerge from the top eight finishers in the URC. There is a caveat, however, as organisers have the additional stipulation that Champions Cup entrants have to be assembled from all the URC's four respective regions, which means Ireland, South Africa, Wales and Scotland/Italy must be represented.
As things stand, the only region not represented in the top eight of the URC log is Wales. Their Shield leaders are Cardiff (11th) who are four points clear of Ospreys (13th) whom they visit on Saturday. One of those teams will qualify for the Champions Cup and they look set to do so at the expense of Connacht (sixth), the Bulls (seventh) or the Sharks (eighth).
It will be nervous times for the Sharks. They have aligned their ambition of winning the Champions Cup along with their stratospheric spend over the last two seasons.
Connacht are away to Glasgow Warriors and may well slip up in Scotland. The Bulls host Leinster’s second string team, while the Sharks, who are perhaps most at risk, are at home to Munster who downed the Stormers in Cape Town last weekend.
By the time they kick off in Durban the Sharks will know if they can still leapfrog the Bulls. Should the Sharks lose, all is not necessarily lost, however. There is also the possibility of Franco Smith’s Glasgow Warriors providing a lifeline. Should they as Challenge Cup semi-finalists go on and win that competition they would have found a second avenue of qualifying for the Champions Cup, which then frees up a spot in that competition.
Glasgow Warriors play Scarlets in the semifinals of the Challenge Cup, while Toulon are up against Benetton in the other. The Scottish and the French teams are heavily favoured to go on and win that competition.
Either way though, it will be nervous times for the Sharks. They have aligned their ambition of winning the Champions Cup along with their stratospheric spend over the past two seasons. The Sharks seek an appropriate return on investment and they will be gutted if they don’t get to compete in the competition that matters.
Last year the Ospreys, who finished ninth, benefited from the qualification quirk of the organisers and there is likely to be robust debate around entrenching teams in the Champions Cup when South Africa become full members at the end of 2025. Entrenching regions in the Champions Cup does little for the integrity of the competition. In fact, the Sharks would have just cause to feel aggrieved if they were to lose out to a Welsh team.
There is no doubt Champions Cup representation brings huge benefits not just for the exposure it gives teams in a rarefied environment but the tournament also carries distinct financial benefits. SA Rugby and the teams under its aegis will only share in the tournament’s profits upon taking up full membership. Moves are, however, afoot to expedite that process.
For now the riches of the tournament may not be the Sharks’ primary consideration. They, given their outlay, will want to prove that they belong at European rugby’s top table. Having a chair pulled out from underneath them would be more than a bummer.
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