Donal Lenihan: Big Springbok franchises a godsend to the ailing PRO14
Leinster’s Adam Byrne scores a try against Toyota Cheetahs last year. The South African franchise are not taking part in this year's PRO14. Picture: INPHO/Tommy Dickson
This weekend heralds the start of a new season in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales while for some, in England and France, the old one trundles on.
We may know the four teams who will contest the 2019/20 Heineken Champions and Challenge Cup finals but in England, there’s still a road to travel to determine who plays in the final of the Gallagher Premiership.
Leinster’s painful defeat to Saracens in their Champions Cup quarter-final has, not for the first time, served to question the suitability of the Guinness PRO14 in preparing the Irish sides for the biggest challenges in European club competition and for the top end of the international game.
By and large, with its capacity to rest the top international players at crucial times during the season thus offering the opportunity to play a decent cohort of younger players, it has served the requirements of Irish rugby well. Recent evidence however would suggest that, in its current format, it’s not competitive enough. Too many predictable results, too many lopsided games, too many absent international stars. The worrying fall-off in the challenge presented by the Welsh regions has been a major factor here.
Thankfully a landmark vote, conducted remotely by the general council of South African Rugby yesterday, looks set to clear the way for their top Super Rugby sides to compete in the Guinness PRO14 from 2021 onwards.
Once officially confirmed at home, the next step is for their inclusion to be ratified by the fellow competing unions in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Italy. Given their addition has the capacity to ignite the competition, that decision should be unanimous.
Right now, the tournament stands at a crossroads.
Holders Leinster, fresh from winning their third championship on the trot only three weeks ago, kick off the new campaign against the Dragons on Friday night. Can’t see anyone getting too animated about the prospect of not being allowed attend that one behind closed doors at the RDS.
The tournament is still branded the PRO14, despite the fact that there are only 12 teams competing for honours as we speak. With a truncated fixture list only announced last Thursday, players and coaches were in the dark up to what their schedule looked like in the coming weeks and months. Hardly ideal.
For the moment, only eight rounds of competitive action, up to the end of November, have been announced. The Southern Kings have gone into liquidation while the participation of the Cheetahs was ruled out due to the pandemic meaning the PRO14 shrunk to 12 teams when the fixtures were finally revealed.
The organisers resisted the temptation to call it the PRO12 because it is hoped there will be an even bigger South African presence in the new year. Quite how you run a tournament that started out with 12 teams in October and expands to 16 halfway through remains to be seen.
The most exciting development, one that I would be more than happy to wait for, is the prospect of the Stormers, Lions, Sharks, and Bulls — for rugby followers of an older generation, the real strength of provincial Springbok rugby in Western Province, Transvaal, Northern Transvaal, and Natal — joining the tournament. They are worth waiting for.
Despite the best efforts of those charged with running the PRO14, the tournament has failed to grab the attention of the general public. The Welsh challenge has been non-existent of late and at a time when Edinburgh have made great strides under Richard Cockerill, the regression of 2015 winners Glasgow Warriors has been disappointing.
The inclusion of the Southern Kings and Cheetahs in 2017 failed to have the desired impact. The Kings were woeful from the outset and, despite a promising start, the Cheetahs haven’t delivered what was expected from them. The problem here is that any player who impressed for either of those two sides were either transferred into a bigger Super Rugby franchise in South Africa the following season or attracted interest from one of their PRO14 opponents.
Rumour has it that the Cheetahs aren’t prepared to take their demotion to Currie Cup rugby lying down and could well take legal action against their own union if they lose out to their big four neighbours, given that they have a participation agreement to compete in the PRO14 until 2023.
What the inclusion of the Kings and Cheetahs has done is pave the way for the more traditional powerhouses of Springbok rugby to migrate more seamlessly into northern hemisphere rugby. The fallout from the global pandemic now appears to have accelerated that process even quicker.
With CVC Capital Partners having recently secured a 28% stake in the PRO14, you can be sure that they will be fully behind the prospect of additional broadcast revenues flowing in from South Africa.
Given the financial challenges facing all the unions, any additional revenue streams will be grabbed with both hands.
The prospect of having those sides, with their traditionally strong support base and World Cup-winning Springboks competing regularly, has the capacity to transform the league. Two conferences of eight teams, with two highly competitive South African sides in both, would amount to a real game-changer.
While Covid-19 could delay the prospect of gripping head-to-heads between South Africa’s best and the Irish provinces for the foreseeable future, the transformative impact would be seismic for our domestic league. They will be worth waiting for.
espite the lack of an Irish province in the European finals scheduled for October 17, the presence of Donnacha Ryan and Simon Zebo will attract sufficient interest in what promises to be a fascinating contest between Racing 92 side and the most popular club in England's Premiership, Exeter Chiefs.
In what has proved a most challenging season for professional rugby, the fact that a new name will be added to the Heineken Champions Cup roll of honour in this, its 25th year, is great for the tournament.
Having fallen in two previous finals against Saracens and Leinster, the Parisians will feel their time has come. For Donnacha Ryan to still command a starting place in a star-studded Racing pack at 36 years of age says everything about the competitive juices still flowing through his veins and why he has proved such a massive loss to Munster and Ireland since his exile in France.
As expected, Saracens made them fight tooth and nail to prevail and succeeded, as they did the previous week against Leinster, in controlling the tempo of the game, turning it into a scrappy, stop-start affair, dictated by penalties.
How fitting therefore that yet another piece of Finn Russell magic (remember the audacious try he created and scored against Munster in Thomond Park?) — with another sumptuous kick, delivered the match-winning score for Juan Imhoff.
The fact that Ryan still has a chance to win a Champions Cup medal on the field of play — he was an unused substitute when Munster last lifted the trophy in Cardiff in 2008— is fitting for one of the unsung heroes of the Irish pack.
His absence from the international scene has come at a cost for Ireland as I have no doubt he could have contributed handsomely to the Irish cause this time last year at the World Cup in Japan.
Likewise, Zebo has plenty to prove as his career approaches a crossroads with his contract up for renewal at the end of the season. After a very disappointing year to date, due primarily to injury, he now has the opportunity to remind everyone, on the biggest club stage of all, just what he is capable of.
