Jury is still out on playing rugby in mid-summer

This is the last rugby column of the year and I am writing it from the Cape Town Sevens, which used to be the annual signing off point of rugby but now clashes with Champions Cup and Challenge Cup and is effectively nearer the start of the season than the end.

I will be back at this venue on Saturday for the Champions Cup game between the Stormers and the reigning champions LaRochelle, and then there are two big United Rugby Championship (URC) derbies between the Stormers and Bulls and Sharks respectively.

While the rest of the country gets a break from live rugby, it’s a big time for the sport in the Mother City, with four big events taking place on consecutive weekends. The LaRochelle game will have the extra significance of it being the first to be played on the newly laid hybrid pitch.

At least the Stormers will be able to use the scrum as a weapon again when they play at home, though on the evidence of the Bulls’ recent games, including their Champions Cup destruction of Saracens at the weekend, it is not necessarily going to favour them more than the visitors in the festive season north/south clash.

Jake White’s off-season business, with two ace frontrow forwards in former Stormers prop Wilco Louw and former Sharks and Lions hooker Akker van der Merwe joining Bok fullback Willie le Roux in moving to Pretoria, has been good.

SPOT ON

The win over Saracens, who had several England players, including Owen Farrell, playing for them, was good not only for the Bulls but for SA rugby given how important it is that playing against SA teams starts to become a draw for the overseas sides in the prestigious Champions Cup.

Not everyone in the UK or Europe is crazy about this country’s inclusion in the Champions Cup, but the Saracens and England lock Maro Itoje was spot on when he said that the more quality there is in the competition the better. And having the Bulls set up Pretoria as an uncrossable frontier, something for teams to aim at, won’t do any harm.

There was a fair crowd at Loftus to see the Bulls win against the three-time champions but it is still not clear that South Africans have bought into the Champions Cup in the way that maybe they should and probably will with the passing of time. While it is good for SA rugby to be aligned to Europe, the jury is also surely still out on summer rugby.

Cape Town, provided they play the games at a reasonable time of day, is the only place where you can feel assured the conditions will be comfortable for the players.

For the rest, there is the humidity in Durban as well as the wet weather that often makes itself felt in the summer months, and on the highveld there are the thunderstorms that haven’t had an impact yet this season but can play havoc.

You also have to question the wisdom of staging a game on the highveld in midsummer at 3pm, as was the case when the Bulls and Sharks played in 34°C heat a week ago. If you want a game of good quality in the summer, no games should kick off before 5.30pm and those in Pretoria and Johannesburg should be played at night, as the Bulls/Saracens game was.

SIZEABLE CROWDS

Then there’s the question of playing over the festive season. Last year sizeable crowds pitched up to the games played over Christmas and New Year in Durban and it was seen as an indication that festive season rugby works, but then it wasn’t that successful that it is being repeated anywhere other than Cape Town.

While the Stormers will be busy over the festive week, the Lions won’t be playing at all, and the Bulls and Sharks will only be playing one game each in Cape Town. The crowd of 30,000 that watched the Stormers and Bulls play in Cape Town last Christmas might not have been the endorsement of Christmas rugby that some made it out to be.

Had those Stormers/Bulls met in March, when Capetonians weren t away on holiday and there was ’more focus on rugby, would it not have drawn a much bigger crowd, as indeed it did when the sides met in the URC quarterfinal?

Regardless of my misgivings though, and it might just be my selfishness as it just feels anathema to be working on rugby two days before I eat my Christmas turkey, the games scheduled for Cape Town over the weeks before this column is resumed in 2024 should provide quality entertainment.

And for the Bulls, Stormers and Sharks it could prove a decisive period in their respective seasons.