Swys is leaning towards Pro-14
NO REASON NOT TO STAY IN RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP
It could serve the best interests of South African rugby to make the move up north, says Swys de Bruin, the former Lions Super Rugby head coach. De Bruin did say, however, one has to be clear whether SA will make a clean break from Sanzaar and pull out of both the Rugby Championship and Super Rugby in favour of the Six Nations and Pro14 competitions.
“I think there’s no reason why we can’t stay in the Championship but move away from Super Rugby to join the Pro14,” said De Bruin, who now spends his time teaching school coaches.
“In that way we can still face New Zealand and Australia in Test matches but rather compete in the Pro14 which is probably better suited to our game,” he said.
The latest talk from Europe is that the Boks won’t be in action in the Eight-Nations after it was speculated that Georgia, and not SA, would replace Japan in that competition.
Sanzaar also stated that the Championship is still due to go ahead as planned, but questions had been raised whether New Zealand would still be able to host the tournament from 7 November to 12 December after their latest series of positive Covid-19 cases.
“My understanding was that we only planned to play in the Eight-Nations Championship because of the Covid-19 situation and travel restrictions, but that we were due to resume playing in the Rugby Championship from next year again,” said De Bruin.
The former Bok backline consultant, however, said there was no doubt in his mind it would be more beneficial for SA teams to join the Pro14, rather than staying in Super Rugby.
“It makes all the sense in the world – there would be much less travel involved as well as jetlag bearing in mind we spent about 17 hours flying to New Zealand for Super Rugby matches,” he said.
“I’m also confident that playing in the Pro14 would suit our game much better with SA teams building their strength around good tight phases, a powerful rolling maul and sound defence, which are the cornerstones of rugby in the Pro14,” added De Bruin.
“One must also remember that most of our Bok players are based in Europe and Japan which would make it easier if players were called up for Bok duty.”