Without a jab there’ll be no pot of gold for SA rugby
SA’s top rugby players will be forgiven if they cast a lingeringly wistful look across the Indian Ocean this weekend.
Super Rugby Trans Tasman kicks off with the best of New Zealand and Australia contesting a new competition that very much has its roots in its forerunner, of which SA was very much a part.
This year will be the first in which South African teams will not play any Super Rugby competition after their long affiliation, which dates back to 1996, came to an abrupt halt last year.
The plug was pulled on the ailing competition as the Covid-19 pandemic spread its tentacles around the globe and transcontinental travel brought to a halt.
Super Rugby’s unique selling point was, of course, the bringing together of far-flung rugby entities, but its sell-by date was brought forward as a result of the virus.
Now the Kiwis and the Aussies are going it alone as travel restrictions between the nations have eased. They will hop across the Tasman (it’s a three-hour flight between the major centres of Sydney and Auckland) after a quarantine-free corridor was established between the two countries last month.
It served as rubber stamp, as one of rugby’s most enduring rivalries was reaffirmed.
This weekend will see the start of a 10-team competition in which five each from New Zealand and Australia will compete against opposition from across “The Ditch”.
The Highlanders host the Reds, the Waratahs the Hurricanes, the Crusaders are at home to the Brumbies and the Rebels meet the Blues, while the Chiefs travel to Perth to meet the Western Force. The New Zealand sides are heavily favoured to dominate the competition. The Australian champion Reds are longer odds to win the tournament with bookmakers than any of the New Zealand sides.
Whether that speaks to the strength of New Zealand rugby or the regress of the game in Australia is a topic of hot debate.
Across the Indian Ocean, South African rugby fans will likely look on with envy. The longer SA’s charges are confined to playing exclusively against each other, the more likely the game here will stagnate.
Already the Springboks’ lofty position atop the world rankings has been derided. The team has not played since the Rugby World Cup final in November 2019 and the country’s rugby elite has not faced international opposition since Super Rugby was halted in March last year.
SA’s franchises were supposed to commence combat in the Rainbow Cup and then the expanded PRO16 competition, but travel restrictions, as things stand, have grounded those ambitions.
Instead, they are still squaring off against each other in the localised version of the Rainbow Cup, with no fixed date for when they can travel to European destinations.
Earlier this week, when SA Rugby announced its annual results, it made clear its intention to still play in this year’s PRO16 competition, but was no closer to providing details of that engagement.
It is as if the country is back in the isolation years, with no-one to play against. Like back then, there may be some takers, but the consequences are too dire to contemplate.
A widespread, speedy and orderly vaccination rollout here is the shot in the arm rugby so desperately craves.