No disrespect intended towards Benetton Treviso, but it’s a pity the Bulls won’t be playing one of the more established leading lights of European rugby such as Munster or Leinster in Saturday’s Rainbow Cup final in Italy.
The past couple of weeks have been a bit of a low-key first foray into what will become the Pro16 era, to replace the two-and-a-half decades of Super Rugby, for SA rugby. The quality of rugby produced in Rainbow Cup SA was good, and the matches both exciting and entertaining, but when the Bulls played the Sharks in Durban in the final game it was the seventh time the two teams have met since local rugby’s return from lockdown last October.
That’s just too much of the same thing to really get the adrenaline of rugby fans properly pumping. There’s a desperate need for something different and for local players to test themselves against overseas players and teams.
Saturday’s final in Treviso will be a significant day for SA rugby in the sense that it will be the first time a local team has met an overseas team in competition since the pandemic interrupted what was to become the last Super Rugby season on March 14 2020.
That’s 15 months and a long enough gap to introduce some self-doubt. The Australian experience in the Trans-Tasman competition, where generally the Aussie sides have been thrashed by their Kiwi counterparts, should be seen as a warning against becoming cocky after playing only internal competition. The reality is we won’t know how good the local players and teams are until we’ve seen them play against overseas opposition.
Some doubt about the strength of the local game might have been reflected in last weekend’s announcement of the wider Springbok squad for the series against the British and Irish Lions. National coach Jacques Nienaber included 22 overseas-based players, which in a squad of 46 is only one player short of being 50%.
Normally we should have a problem with that, for while national director of rugby Rassie Erasmus is right when he says SA franchises can’t compete with the pound, euro and yen, we should be making it more difficult for players to opt for overseas pastures ahead of local ones. And at a time when the Bok brand is strong, letting the players know they have a better chance of getting into the national team if they play locally is a way to do that.
But right now it is hard to argue against the selection as it is completely understandable for Erasmus and Nienaber to feel more comfortable with players who have shown good form in competitions where they’ve played against top overseas players. What everyone with any interest in SA rugby could really do with right now is to see a proper examination of the strength of the local game by having the top team, which is the Bulls by some distance, play a team that holds a similar standing in rugby north of the equator.
About the only helpful thing about having Benetton Treviso contest the final from a promotional point of view is that at least Saturday’s decider will be played on their home ground. That should make it harder for the Bulls, but it would be a bit alarming from a SA rugby viewpoint if the Bulls, given how dominant they’ve been locally, weren’t able to beat an Italian team that languished near the bottom of the table in the recent Pro14 season.
We’ll never know what would have transpired had Benetton had to go to Ospreys this past weekend instead of the game being forfeited to them because of Covid. What we do know though is that Munster smashed the other Italian team, Zebre, 54-11 in their last game on Friday, so Benetton would have had to win at Bridgend to qualify had the game taken place.
You might ask why I am being so negative about Benetton when they made the final fairly and squarely. I am not questioning their right to be in the final, but instead acknowledging that they aren’t the drawcard that Leinster or Munster would have been if you want to promote Saturday’s final as being between the best of the North and best of the South.
While Benetton ended the league phase of the competition as the only unbeaten team, the four games they ended up playing weren’t against the strongest teams. They beat Glasgow Warriors on the opening weekend, then won both derbies against Zebre before relying on a strong defensive effort to pip Connacht, who are the fourth-best Irish province.
But what Saturday will at least represent is the reintroduction of international flavour into our rugby and it can be seen as the start of the proper build-up to the British and Irish Lions tour. And for the Bulls, it is a chance to lay down a marker ahead of the Pro16 by winning the first trophy of the new era.
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