GAVIN RICH: Star players give Leinster an edge over SA teams in Champions Cup

The ease with which Leinster thumped the Bulls was less of a warning to the Springboks than it was a signal to the two SA teams heading into Champions Cup playoff fixtures about what will be required to win the elite European competition.

The Bulls have been the best-performing local side in the United Rugby Championship (URC) this season, but came a poor second against Ireland’s top team. Leinster dominated the URC in its previous incarnation as the Pro14, yet have failed to lift the new trophy mainly because they’ve been forced by the heavy workload they face at the sharp end of both competitions to go understrength in two consecutive semifinals.

They showed against the Bulls in Dublin that they are near invincible opposition when at full muster and completely focused. When the Bulls beat them in the 2021/22 semifinal they were without some key players and were suffering from the hangover of a Champions Cup final defeat to La Rochelle the week before.

Last season they were slated to play five big knockouts in a row over consecutive weekends in their quest to win the double by lifting the Champions Cup and URC trophies. In the end, they just played four because they were knocked out by Munster when they were resting players in the URC semifinal. They were again beaten by La Rochelle when at full strength in the Champions Cup final.

It is no exaggeration to suggest Leinster at full strength are a shadow Ireland team. In the past Six Nations game against Scotland, Ireland fielded no less than 10 Leinster players in the starting team and 16 in the match day 23.

The Ireland recipe for success is similar to the one that contributed to the historic Springbok triumph at the 1995 World Cup. Kitch Christie coached a team made up predominantly of the Transvaal team he had mentored to two successive Currie Cup titles and one Super 10 trophy.

That can’t be replicated in modern times in SA simply because no local franchise would have the money to employ the bulk of the Bok squad. And given the Boks have now won successive World Cup titles, you’d question the necessity of having one franchise dominate the national team. We could argue, as Bulls director of rugby Jake White has, that having the star players playing locally will increase the standing of the franchise/regional game. It is a good point I’ve supported.

Yet with a full house attending the recent north/south URC derby between the Bulls and Stormers, and even the Sharks drawing nearly 20,000 while footing the URC log, local rugby appears to be going OK. The Bulls’ defeat to Leinster had no relevance to the Boks simply because, unlike Leinster with Ireland, the Bulls are far from being a shadow Bok team.

What Leinster are though is a good measure of where the Bulls and the Stormers need to be if they want to make the next step by challenging as strongly for the Champions Cup as they have so far for the URC (the Stormers have won it once and played in two finals, the Bulls in one).

La Rochelle, the two-time reigning champions, are not a shadow international side like Leinster and to a lesser extent Toulouse are, but they are on that level because they have so many big name overseas marquee players on their books — headed by Wallaby lock Will Skelton and former All Black scrumhalf Tamera Kerr-Barlow, but also including Springbok capped backs Dillyn Leyds and Raymond Rhule.

That’s what the SA teams don’t have that most of the top Champions Cup sides do — overseas players to bolster what otherwise might be areas of weakness. Toulouse has won the most European titles and rank on the same level as Leinster and La Rochelle. The last mentioned were beaten by the Stormers in a pool game in Cape Town in December, but they were in poor form at the time and have picked up winning momentum since then. The Stormers will be hard pressed to beat them on Saturday, even at their home fortress in Greenpoint.

The Bulls should win their round of 16 clash with Lyon, and would have a fair chance of beating their quarterfinal opponents — Northampton Saints or Munster. Thereafter though it is Toulouse, Leinster or La Rochelle, and on the evidence of what we saw against Leinster in the URC game, that is going to be a lot tougher.

White will know that because it is his understanding of what is required to win the Champions Cup that triggers his well known unhappiness at the fact that so many local heroes are campaigning overseas. He has a point too — the Bulls would be able to live with the likes of Leinster if they had players such as Handré Pollard, Lood de Jager, RG Snyman, Jan Serfontein and Jesse Kriel (all overseas based former Bulls) still playing for them.