Peter Jackson: Weakened South African sides show up competition's flaws
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The Stormers and The Sharks limped home from London yesterday on a weekend when the credibility of the Champions Cup took a fearful bashing.
Between them, the South African contenders left almost an entire 23-man squad of Springboks behind in Cape Town and Durban. Their absence helped turn two of the round’s more intriguing duels into no-contests, infuriating those who had delved deep into their pockets for a dose of Saturday night fever, not a mis-match.
Leicester greeted a Sharks team stripped of a dozen Springboks from last month’s all-conquering European tour by helping themselves to eight tries. The Sharks sank without trace, conceding 56 points.
In London a couple of hours later, Harlequins filled their boots against another weakened South African team. They, too, scored eight tries. Unable to live up to their name, The Stormers went down like a lead balloon, conceding 53 points.
Given that many of the Springbok absentees are in various states of disrepair, the finger of blame ought not to be pointed at their employers but at the flawed construction of the tournament itself as built by European Professional Club Rugby.
"The organisers need to look at it," Sharks coach John Plumtree said in the immediate aftermath of their mauling by the Tigers. "The South African boys are not robots and right now they are being treated like robots." That only eight of the 24 qualifiers drop out at the pool stage encourages contenders to write off a game knowing that two wins out of the four will get them through. Last season one proved enough for Munster and Racing to reach the last 16.
The logistical fall-out from South Africa’s inclusion is coming under increasing fire from those at the sharp end. Their justifiable concern begs the question why nobody kicked up a fuss when the fixtures were made last summer?
Money doesn’t talk any more in sport; it shrieks, none more so than in Rugby Union. The Springboks bring a hefty commercial value, ironically so for those who spent their weekend counting the cost of buying tickets on the reasonable assumption that they would see a few world-beating superstars.
The reputational damage is such that those who parrot the party line, spouting forth about the ‘greatest of all club tournaments’, fail to acknowledge its decline from the golden days of the Heineken Cup. It used to be the greatest of all club tournaments until the organisers destroyed the magical chemistry of the old formula.
It never failed to work a treat: six pools of four, home-and-away matches, winner of each pool into the knock-out quarter-finals alongside the two highest-ranked runners-up. Now there are four pools of six, no home-and-away, and twice as many qualifiers for the knock-out stage.
With it comes a schedule which asks a team like the Bulls to fly 6,000-miles for a game at Saracens in the teeth of a winter storm, then fly back and play the next match seven days later in the heat of summer on the High Veldt in Pretoria.
All that from a sport where the movers-and-shakers talk ad infinitum about player welfare being their top priority. And they do so with a straight face…
Fortunately for La Rochelle, Ronan O’Gara has never been content to rest easy at setting just the solitary European record, even if his goalkicking total becomes farther beyond human reach with the passing of every season.
Even at this early stage, nobody would bet against ROG and his creation on the Atlantic coast from winding up in Cardiff next May and achieving something that’s never been done before; a fourth Champions’ Cup final in five years.
In shoving Bath and Bristol towards an early exit, La Rochelle have let it be known that they are still some way short of upping their power game to its usual pulverising level. Leinster, next up in O’Gara-ville for the 2025 edition of their grudge match, have been given due notice.
La Rochelle are flat out on two fronts, unlike many of their Top 14 rivals and at least one South African team with Sharks’ coach John Plumtree defending his rested stars by stating: "They don’t front up every week.’’ What? Those words will sound like a red rag to O’Gara’s bull. "We want to win Europe and we want to win the Top 14," he told Premier Sports. "The great thing about us as a club is that we play hard in both competitions. You have to front up every week.
"A lot of people on the outside don’t get it. I don’t want to sound greedy but you have to have the boys inspired and stimulated.’’
When it comes to self-destruction, nobody has managed it to more devastating effect over the last two weekends than Stade Francais. Seko Macalou began yesterday’s scrap with Saracens in Paris as if hell-bent to strike a blow in support of his second-row sent off at Thomond Park.
A hacking trip of Sarries’ scrum-half van Zyl followed by a high tackle on the same player left Scottish referee Hollie Davidson no choice but to send Macalou off. Her male English counterpart Luke Pearce had done the same eight days later to Pierre-Henri Azagoh and Baptiste Pesenti.
In 13 matches against British and Irish teams, French clubs have accumulated more than twice as many cards as their opponents. A scratch beneath the surface will show there is more to the subject than meets the eye.
Take, for example, Munster’s grim defeat at Castres, made all the more forgettable by 35 penalties and free kicks. Munster conceded 19 without a single yellow card. Castres conceded 16 in the course of being handicapped by not one yellow but three.
The Champions’ Cup still finds room for enough Grand Old Men to fill a team with an ocean of experience. The team, drawn from the first two rounds, includes one Argentinian in his 41st year, another in his 40th along with an English full back.
Oldies:
Mike Brown (Leicester Tigers, 39); Makazole Mapimpi (Sharks, 34), George Moala (Clermont, 34), Henry Chavancy (Racing, 36), Liam Williams (Saracens, 33); Benjamin Urdapilleta (Clermont, 38), Danny Care (Harlequins, 37); Francisco Gomez Kodela (Stade Francais, 40), Augustin Creevy (Benetton, 39), Dan Cole (Leicester Tigers, 37); Leone Nakawara (Castres), Kane Douglas (La Rochelle, 35); Peter O’Mahony (Munster, 35), Levanti Botia (La Rochelle, 35), Fritz Lee (Clermont, 36).
Toulouse did their imperious best yesterday to show how much they care for a tournament treated with too much indifference by too many. They turned up fully-loaded to give the Champions’ Cup a show worthy of the name.
In emphasising the gulf between the top of the Top 14 and the bottom of the English Premiership, they ran in 10 tries against the Exeter Chiefs, European champions four years ago. It rather ridiculed Saracens’ head coach Mark McCall’s theory about the difficulty of winning away matches in Europe.
Toulouse found it ridiculously easy from start to finish in Devon, Bordeaux likewise during the second half against Ulster in Belfast: two French wins totaling 104 points. And, in a style befitting their status as English champions, Northampton’s matadors came up trumps in the bull-ring at Loftus Versfeld.
Jack Nowell, going horizontal in fearless defiance of gravity as if auditioning for a job on the flying trapeze. A try which had to be seen about 25 times to be believed set La Rochelle on their way against a bunch of Bears too tame by comparison.
Leinster going the full 100 metres from their own in-goal area; 19 passes, involving 11 players, four rucks, one tap penalty. Finished by the man who started it, Jordie Barrett.
: Clermont at The Aviva with not even a losing bonus to show for pushing Leinster all the way. How absurd that Exeter went close to a try bonus after the embarrassment of conceding ten.
: Rob Kearney, referring to the mountainous Will Skelton on Premier Sports: ‘Skeleton time after time carried the ball…’ Ireland’s retired full back kept a straight face which suggested that he didn’t mean what he said. At 6ft 8in and almost 24 stone, La Rochelle’s Wallaby is some skeleton.
The front eight:
1 Toulouse (10 out of 10) 2 Northampton Saints (10) 3 Bordeaux (10) 4 Saracens (10) 5 La Rochelle (9) 6 Leinster (9) 7 Toulon (8) 8 Glasgow Warriors (7) Middle eight:
Munster, Leicester Tigers (6 out of 10) Clermont, Sale Sharks, Harlequins, Natal Sharks (5) Benetton, Castres (4) Bottom eight, down and almost out:
Bath (2 out of 10) Ulster, Exeter Chiefs, Bristol Bears, Stade Francais, Bulls, Racing, Stormers (0)
15 Louis Bielle-Biarrey (Bordeaux) 14 Jack Nowell (La Rochelle) 13 Pierre-Louis Barassi (Toulouse) 12 Rory Hutchinson (Northampton) 11 Mattis Lebel (Toulouse) 10 Sam Prendergast (Leinster) 9 Baptiste Jaueau (Clermont) 1 Andrew Porter (Leinster) 2 Silalotu Latu (La Rochelle) 3 Rabah Slimani (Leinster) 4 Thibaud Flament (Toulouse) 5 Will Skelton (La Rochelle) 6 Theo McFarland (Saracens) 7 Ben Curry (Sale) 8 Gregory Alldritt (La Rochelle)