Up north, in France and Italy, Clermont and Benetton are buzzing at the prospect of hosting two South African sides in the last 16 of the Challenge Cup, but the noise is yet to reach fever pitch in South Africa at the thought of one Challenge Cup match and two Champions Cup knockout matches in the heart of South African rugby’s landscape.
The Stormers host the tournament champions La Rochelle in Cape Town on Saturday afternoon, straight after the Bulls have been at home to France’s Lyon.
The Sharks complete South Africa’s five-strong challenge in Durban on Sunday afternoon playing Italy’s Zebre.
The Sharks, stunned by Zebre in Parma in the United Rugby Championship this season, will win. It is a very different Sharks team playing on Sunday in a tournament that gives them an entry into next season’s Champions Cup, but only if they win this season’s Challenge Cup final.
A diabolical URC campaign, which started with just one win from 11 matches, means the Sharks won’t make the top eight, which is the qualification to Europe’s premier and most elite rugby competition, the Champions Cup.
South Africans are versed with the Champions Cup, primarily because of the exploits of Toulon and Saracens, when both winners featured many South African players. The Toulon European championship side was filled with some of South Africa’s best players, including the inspirational Joe van Niekerk, Danie Rossouw and Juan Smith, the incomparable Bakkies Botha and the greatest try-scoring finisher in Springboks history Bryan Habana.
Toulon won three successive Champions Cup titles with these players and several South Africans contributed to Saracens’ first two titles.
Rich history
Among them were Springbok World Cup winner Schalk Brits, an icon of the club, Durban born and raised England midfielder Brad Barritt, who captained Saracens to their first Champions Cup title, Petrus du Plessis, Michael Rhodes and legendary Springboks flanker Schalk Burger.
Cheslin Kolbe won gold in the Champions Cup with Toulouse and gold in the Challenge Cup with Toulon and Jake White’s Montpellier, inspired by Johan Goosen, also won the Challenge Cup with 23 South Africans in the match, including two-times World Cup winner Handré Pollard.
Trevor Halstead, of Sharks and Bok fame in the early 2000s, was also a winner with Munster and the most recent South African individual winners were La Rochelle’s Dillyn Leyds and Raymond Rhule.
There is a rich recent history of South African players being standouts in the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup but given that it is only the second season that South African teams are playing in the respective competitions, there hasn’t been the interest one would expect in this rugby-obsessed country.
It is going to require a lot of education and marketing in the future for South Africans to get an appreciation of why the Champions Cup is so revered among players from France, England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Italy.
The Stormers, who beat star-studded La Rochelle in Cape Town last December 21-20 thanks to a Manie Libbok touchline conversion with the last kick of the game, have the biggest average home attendance in the URC, but the appeal of the Champions Cup opposition has not evoked quite as big a stir among supporters. Equally, up north for the Bulls when one considers the appetite for local derbies and the URC.
Prestigious event
The tournament sponsors and custodians of the respective tournaments have to up their game to showcase the history and prestige of this event and, for the South African supporter, only a winning campaign will spark the necessary interest in a competition that is proving a difficult sell because of the stop-start nature of a group stage played in the latter part of one year and the play-offs a few months later in the next year.
The Bulls and Stormers, second and fifth on the URC league table, have enjoyed tremendous home support this season and both should get crowds of more than 25,000 on Saturday, but given the nature of the competition, these should be sell-out games.
La Rochelle’s starting team, as an example, is expected to feature 13 Test internationals. There should be a queue for tickets and not a question as to why there is no queue.
There is work to be done for the South African teams to negate overseas travel in this competition, but there is even more work to be done for the competition sponsors in selling the competition to the South African market.
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