SA teams make URC ‘Any Given Sunday’

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Vodacom United Rugby Championship chief Martin Anayi says the Stormers and Vodacom Bulls reaching the inaugural final has added the “jeopardy” anticipated by adding South African teams. DYLAN JACK reports.

Anayi was speaking exclusively to SARugbymag.co.za in the build-up to the URC’s grand final, which will be contested by the two South African teams.

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When the announcement was made last year that the four main South African franchises – the Bulls, Stormers, Sharks and Lions – would be joining an expanded PRO14 to form the new URC, there was mixed reaction to say the least.

There were questions over how competitive South African teams would be and what they would really add to a European tournament. This, of course, was not helped by the fact that the franchises were without several Springboks as the Rugby Championship overlapped with the start of the season in September.

However, with the Springboks returning in the new year and a long run of fixtures at home, the South African sides outplayed those from the northern hemisphere, with the Bulls, Stormers and Sharks not progressing to the playoffs but also securing Champions Cup rugby for next season.

In the URC playoffs, the Bulls grabbed a thrilling win over the Sharks in Pretoria before overturning the odds and upsetting Leinster in Dublin. The Stormers, meanwhile, beat Edinburgh and snatched a last-gasp victory against Ulster in Cape Town to secure the hosting of the grand final.

“I don’t think we had any doubt,” Anayi told SARugbymag.co.za when asked about the success of the South African sides. “When we were doing the process of expansion and deciding which teams would be coming in. The most important thing was to make the competition stronger. You do that by bringing in teams which are better than the ones you already have in the majority.

“If I look at how the Bulls beat Leinster, that is what we wanted from the competition, 100%. Not necessarily that teams would beat Leinster, but we would get jeopardy in the fixtures where you couldn’t tell who was going to win from weekend to weekend. That’s the ‘Any Given Sunday’ mantra from the NFL that we tried to build over time.

“If you fast forward two or three years’ time and you’ve got a strong Edinburgh and Glasgow, Ospreys or Cardiff, you would have a real depth to the league which very few leagues in the world have. That’s what we are trying to achieve. The entry of the South African teams was always about challenging middle to top of the table.

“What I love about the South African teams is that if you look at the Bulls or Stormers squad, those players have become Springboks through playing in the URC. That’s the conveyer belt of talent that you’ve also got in New Zealand. It’s rare to have that, the next player coming into the team is going to be of the same or better quality than the person before them.”

White and Bulls: a match made in heaven

Stadiums in South Africa opened to 50% capacity in the new year, which has only helped local fans get invested in the tournament.

Saturday’s grand final between the Stormers and Bulls in Cape Town has been announced as sold out, with 31 000 fans expected to attend.

“What we’ve seen is this absolute crescendo of interest,” said Anayi. “That’s in everything from social media to databases growing, our streaming service URC TV has had a massive bounce because of the South Africans living in the UK. It is just growing and growing. In the past few weeks, we’ve been able to get more fans into the stadiums in South Africa and that’s massively helped. This is almost a perfect crescendo to the interest that was already building.

“I think it’s also contextual. This isn’t the Currie Cup final. This is actually north vs south and the two best teams this year are from South Africa. They are in their rightful positions. It is really, really pleasing. It is unexpected. We were giving the South African teams a couple of years to bring home the players that they wanted to bring home, which is now happening.

“The next thing is about year two,” Anayi added. “What I love about that is South Africa has thrown down the gauntlet to the Celtic and Italian teams right now. South Africa has kind of said, ‘You wanted us to take part in your tournament, we are part of it and, by the way, we have won it’. That creates rivalries, it creates storylines and meaningful games – all the stuff we wanted from the URC.”

WIN: R10 000 Cellucity hamper with SA Rugby magazine

Photo: Ryan Wilkisky/BackpagePix

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Dylan Jack