South Africa Should Look To The Leinster Model To Avoid Hot-and-cold Performances At Provincial Level

No South African teams qualified for the elite Champions Cup this year and in the competition for the also-rans, the Challenge Cup, the three-team SA challenge is faltering.

The Stormers did not even make the second-tier competition that could be renamed the Consolation Cup because it is for the teams not good enough for the Champions Cup.

Why is it that our local teams cannot consistently deliver across the United Rugby Championship and the Champions and Challenge Cups?

The chief reason is that our locally based players are over-extended. Since South Africa joined Europe while keeping one foot in the southern hemisphere for the Springboks, it has meant that the top players from our major franchises play from January to December.

It is virtually impossible for the top South African players to excel for 12 months of the year as things stand. The system currently favours the Springboks and nobody complained last year when the Boks won 11 of the 13 Tests they played to reinforce their status as reigning, back-to-back world champions.