Kings of Europe: SA teams face new horizons

As exciting as it may be to join Champions Cup, it could prove enervating for local franchises

● Having already left some significant stud marks in European soil, South Africa will next week plant the other foot when a new era of the Champions Cup kicks off.

The Stormers, Bulls and Sharks will join the continent’s elite in a competition that is to Europe what Super Rugby used to be on this side of the equator.

Much like Super Rugby, the Champions Cup — or Heineken Cup, as it was originally known — was birthed when the game went professional after the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

Fought across well-established tribal lines, the best of the French Top 14, the English Premiership and the United Rugby Championship (URC) have contested a vibrant, hyper competitive competition and now SA will join the party through their connection in the latter tournament.

But as exciting as it may be to go into Europe’s premium club competition, it could also prove enervating for SA franchises who have to spread their resources across three fronts.

Head-scratcher

The coaches of the Stormers, Bulls and Sharks will for a while still tweak their plans on how to best deploy their respective squads across the Champions Cup, the URC, the Currie Cup and junior competitions.

The Lions will face a similar headscratcher when they go into battle in the Challenge Cup.

Squad salary caps as well as the maximum number of contracted playing personnel have had to be adjusted after local teams were bound by belt-tightening exercises like the industry savings plan in 2020.

Squads can now be 50-strong and this year’s salary cap was adjusted to just under R70m per squad. The SA teams are still way off the going rates in Europe. The Irish clubs operate without limits: the English clubs are bound by a £5m (R106m) cap, while clubs in France have to stay inside £8.4m (R178m).

In anticipation of the challenge that awaits in Europe, local franchises like the Sharks and the Bulls in particular have contracted several high profile SA players that used to be based abroad.

They will certainly need all hands on deck to challenge European blue-blood teams like Toulouse, who won the competition a record five times, and Leinster who won four.

While those teams have established pedigree in the competition, SA’s teams can draw inspiration from defending champions La Rochelle who competed in the back waters of French rugby until their promotion to the Top14 as recently as 2014. The same can be said of Lyon who won the last Challenge Cup and who will be participating in the Champions Cup.

Marathon with roadblocks

Time-wise the Champions Cup, like the URC, is a marathon, though with clearly defined roadblocks. Unlike the URC, there will be very little room for “off days” in the Champion’s Cup as there are only four pool matches before the knockouts.

The competition is made up of 24 teams (eight each from French Top 14, English Premiership and the URC).

Two pools of 12 are bracketed into four tiers determined by log position in their respective leagues. Tier one teams will play those in tier four and tier two will square off with those in three. Each team will play home and away matches against their two foreign opponents.

URC champs, the Stormers, for example, have tier one status which means they will clash with perennial French sluggers Clermont and Brentford-based London Irish.

The Sharks will play Harlequins and Bordeaux-Bègles, while the Bulls will lock horns with Lyon and Exeter.

The competition kicks off next Friday when London Irish play Montpellier and will conclude with the final on May 20 in Dublin.