Europe’s elite clubs are facing trip into unknown

THE European Cup final in Marseille was not billed as a watershed moment, but Europe's elite club competition will not be the same next season, or for the foreseeable future.

It is going inter-continental, and South Africa's accelerated entry into Europe's showcase tournament next season means that the 28th edition will see the dynamic change radically. The qualification of the Stormers (Cape Town), Bulls (Pretoria), and Sharks (Durban) through the URC league standings gives them the same representation as Ireland, who have Leinster, Ulster and Munster qualified.

The remaining two URC qualifiers are Edinburgh and Ospreys. As Scottish/Italian ‘geographic' pool winners, Edinburgh earned their qualification by finishing 7th in the league. However, the Ospreys, who finished 9th, failed to make the quarter-final playoffs and qualified on a free pass purely because they won the Welsh pool.

The South Africans are already flexing their muscle on the playing front, and it suggests that the URC title could soon become an Irish-Springbok preserve – and that the Welsh, Scottish and Italian sides will have to raise their standard significantly to have any more than token representation in Europe's top tier. The other likely outcome is that Leinster, Ulster, and Munster will have far fewer opportunities to rest their best line-ups in the URC.

There are also significant implications for the Premiership and Europe's powerhouse domestic league, the Top 14. The advent of the South African franchises means that Premiership clubs winning the European Cup could soon become rare occasions rather than regular, especially as they are already playing second fiddle to the French and Irish.

The English clubs are claiming already that they are handicapped by the slashing of the salary cap to £5m, but they would do well to have a look at the South African franchises, whose home-grown squads are run on even smaller budgets of around £3.5m.

What is even more extraordinary is that even though the 2022 European Cup is done and dusted, there has been no official confirmation of the new format involving the South Africans.

My understanding is that this is imminent, and that the delay is due to EPCR being unable to achieve consensus behind the scenes, with concerns among French, English and Irish teams over travel, and over the reorientation of the tournament from being European to pan-African.

This smacks of horse-after-cart organisation, and big players like

Toulouse are said to be uneasy about the lack of detail about the format.

Affordable travel to South Africa is a big obstacle, both for clubs and their supporters, and at the moment EPCR does not have an airline sponsor to help offset those costs.

The idea of hundreds of the European-based fans – let alone thousands – jetting to Johannes- burg for a long weekend on an £800 economy ticket to watch a pool game against the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld in the same way they would if Leicester were playing Toulon at the Stade Mayol is pie in the sky.

It explains why there has been lobbying by English, French and Irish outfits South African franchises to forsake their home grounds and play their home matches in Europe. This is bolstered by statistics which indicate there are over 267,000 UK residents who were born in South Africa, including 100,000 South African nationals.

Another influential factor is feedback from URC teams who have traveled to South Africa this season to fulfil fixtures.

They say that the effect of playing two games either side of long-haul air travel is a recipe for fatigue.

Inevitably, playing at altitude on the high veld only compounds the problem.

The South African view is strongly opposed to denying fans in, say, Durban the right to see Springbok talisman Siya Kolisi play for the Sharks on home turf. They say they will be paying their way thanks to the financial clout of their broadcast partner, Supersport, and also by being a competitive force on the argue that to handicap them at the outset by insisting that South African franchises play home games in Europe would be bad for the tournament's integrity.

The South Africans also believe it is bad for business. Rather than increasing the footprint of the tournament, and attracting a wider audience, it will shrink, with no match-ticket and TV subscriber sales to drive its promotion.

“The European Cup has a culture of pitting the best against the best”

It is a persuasive argument, but there is also little doubt that the South African incursion into the European Cup is the stalking horse for the Springboks being included in the Six Nations in the near future. This is entwined with the recent investment in the game by the venture capital firm CVC, which owns significant shareholdings in the URC, the Premiership, and the Six Nations.

CVC may have no direct financial stake in EPCR, but it would be naive to believe that it has not had a big hand in steering the European Cup towards South Africa.

It is a journey that will see the European Cup undergo its biggest change so far. The European part of the tournament should still see fans travel to matches as part of a great social and sporting experience. How the South African part of the venture unfolds is less clear, especially as airfares are high, and it is also afflicted constantly by a high crime rate.

In rugby terms alone it is essential that it avoids becoming a European version of Super Rugby, which eventually saw SA fans switch off in their droves. The key is to insist on teams selecting their Test stars and putting out their best line-ups whenever European games are played, with heavy fines and possible suspension from the tournament for offending clubs.

Shadow line-ups because some coaches are saving players for domestic league matches, or have decided that winning on South African soil is unlikely, must be banished. The European Cup has been a success because it has a culture of pitting the best against the best. First and last, it has to remain fiercely competitive.