GAVIN RICH: Look no further than excess of rugby for teams going understrength

Here’s a reminder that stats can only tell a story if you look behind them: in three years of both teams being part of the United Rugby Championship (URC), Leinster have yet to beat the Stormers.

Given who Leinster are and what they have done, there is a huge distortion to their record in SA since the start of the URC era. They have played six games here and won just one, that being a last gasp come from behind win over the Lions last season. That is a less than 20% success rate in the country for one of the giants of the world club game.

They are yet to beat the Sharks in Durban or the Bulls at Loftus, but you need to dig behind the bald statistics — Leinster have yet to send a full strength squad to SA.

So while Stormers fans were right to celebrate their team’s comfortable win at the weekend, it rightly didn’t bring the elation that a win over a full-strength Leinster would have. Which is probably one of the reasons Stormers stalwart Dan du Plessis expressed a wish a few weeks ago for Leinster to send a full strength team. The other reason being that players want to test themselves against the best.

Leinster’s understrength tours highlight the hypocrisy of the northern scribes who pilloried the Bulls when they fielded their second string in the recent Champions Cup quarterfinal against Northampton.

Of course, those who attacked the Bulls will tell you it was a Champions Cup quarterfinal, and the importance of the game should have been respected. But then that conveniently overlooks the fact that Lyon came to Loftus for the first playoff game (round of 16) with a second-string team.

Jake White’s decision to go understrength is still being criticised overseas, with the Sunday Times (London) rugby writer Stephen Jones using it as an excuse in Saturday’s edition of his newspaper to call for SA teams to be ditched from the competition.

It won’t happen, because SA Rugby will have completed the process of buying into the Champions Cup as full partners within the next year. Plus, while like the URC they are criticised for including SA teams, the organisers of the Champions Cup only have positive things to say about the benefits brought about by SA’s inclusion.

Devaluing rugby

But it is an ongoing theme that some sections of the overseas media seem reluctant to drop. The vast travel distances that the cross-hemisphere games entail are usually used as the main reason the SA participation doesn’t work, and it is true that it was the challenge posed by the travel logistics, and the timing of their quarterfinal, that prompted the Bulls to send their second-string team to Franklin Gardens.

Yet it isn’t only the travel that is the problem, and it is disingenuous for anyone north of the equator to pretend that the understrength games they contend are devaluing rugby only came about when SA joined the European competitions.

Several French teams played in England understrength during the pool phase, and English teams went to France and Ireland with understrength teams. Most of those destinations are a maximum of a two-hour flight apart, in other words Joburg or Durban to Cape Town.

That suggests it is not just travel that is causing teams to go understrength, but an issue that is far bigger and yet is overlooked by rugby administrators in their quest to satisfy the broadcasters. There is just too much rugby.

Leinster sent an understrength team to SA so they could prepare the first-choice team for next weekend’s Champions Cup semifinal, but if they had been playing these last two weeks at home they would probably still have gone relatively understrength. There is only so much rugby top players can play before it starts to have an adverse effect physically and psychologically.

In 2023 Leinster, if they had hit their target by winning the Champions Cup and the URC, would have played five consecutive playoff games. Their high seeding in the Champions Cup and top position on the URC log determined that all of those games would be at home; they had no travelling to do.

And yet they fielded an understrength team when they got blown out in the URC semifinal by Munster and were also understrength in their opening playoff game against the Sharks.

Leinster were criticised for that selection but did they have any choice? Players are not machines, and player welfare cannot be ignored.

Most of the northern teams only come to SA once a season; they can afford to travel on overnight flights and there is little or no jet-lag consequence. The main reason so many teams are going understrength across club competitions, and it is happening in the Gallagher Premiership too, where travel is no obstacle at all, is there is just too much rugby.