GAVIN RICH: It’s simple: SA owners of URC teams get what they pay for

If there was still some confusion over why the SA challenge in the Champions Cup failed so dismally it was cleared up at the weekend when the local teams returned to United Rugby Championship (URC) action.

One week on from a humiliating exit from the elite European competition, the Sharks were able to comfortably beat Cardiff in Cardiff. The Durbanites have been ravaged by injury over the past two months, and that contributed to their tame surrender of their Champions Cup challenge.

But playing a Cardiff team that was without half its team to the Wales squad busy with preparations for the Six Nations, the absence of the likes of Eben Etzebeth, Aphelele Fassi and André Esterhuizen didn’t matter so much. They still had weak edges to their game, but in the end the Sharks won with quite a bit to spare.

The difference between that game and the one six days earlier in Bordeaux wasn’t so much they were playing a side weakened as much as they were. They were also playing a side that did not have the huge budgetary advantage the two French teams that beat them over the previous fortnight, Toulouse and Bordeaux Begles, had over them.

The Welsh challenge in the URC is going a lot better this season and there was a point last weekend where three Welsh teams populated the top eight on the log. But the Welsh regions are still several levels below the French Galatico teams, and for that matter the flying unbeaten URC log leaders, Leinster. Which cues another SA team: the Stormers.

Given they were playing a Leinster side that provides more than 20 internationals to the Ireland international squad, who are also on a training camp currently, most pundits were in agreement the Stormers stood a chance of scoring an upset.

Their coach, John Dobson, thought so too, which was why he went in with a weakened team in the final Champions Cup pool game against Racing 92. He saw an opportunity against Leinster, and he targeted the Dublin game as the big one on a two-match tour that encompassed one game each in the two competitions the Stormers were competing in.

Instead the Aviva Stadium game became an opportunity for Leinster to show just why they are unbeaten in both Europe and the URC, and why they started the weekend 10 points clear of the second-placed team on the URC log. The Stormers played poorly, but Leinster were quality. It was hard to believe they were missing so many players and their comfortable win underlined the depth they have at their disposal. Again, it comes down to budget.

Leinster had a clutch of Ireland players who will be appearing in the Six Nations still available to them because they were coming back from injury and who the Ireland coach felt needed some extra game time. Hooker Dan Sheehan was man of the match, wing James Lowe showed he was returning to his best form after returning only recently from injury. There were others.

But the real standout was Jordie Barrett, the All Black centre who created his new team’s two first-half tries and then scored the third himself. Barrett looked a level apart and lifted the players around him. As did Springbok lock RG Snyman, who hasn’t always looked that motivated at club level but went into derby mentality when playing against fellow South Africans.

There it is right there. While the owners of the local teams may be understandably concerned about what they perceive as the underperformance of the sides they are bankrolling, perhaps if they look at what the foreign owners are outlaying on players, and the overseas stars they bring in to strengthen their sides, they will understand the imbalance. In a nutshell, they are getting what they are paying for; the French owners get what they pay for.

Nick Mallett is quite right: SA teams are never going to compete in Europe until the local sides have more money to build squad depth. The Bulls were comprehensively better than the Lions in their derby in Johannesburg, but as Jake White put it afterwards, it was an expensive victory in the sense that he lost Elrigh Louw and Ruan Nortjé, two of the team’s leaders, to injury.

If he had the budgets of Leinster or the top French teams he might have been able to contract some of the marquee SA players currently based overseas, and injuries might not matter so much. But he can’t, so they do, and those two injuries could have a severe negative impact on his team’s chances of making the URC top two.

As for the Lions, who have the lowest budget of the SA sides, their owner definitely gets what he pays for. In the case of the Lions, their budgetary constraints mean they don’t just lose players to overseas teams but also to the Sharks. It’s why they are a poor second among the Gauteng teams and the perennial also-rans in SA’s URC challenge.