A provisional fixture list of the SARU planned junior competitions was circulated to the unions for their comment earlier this week. This fixture list does differ from the previous list sent to the unions earlier this year but it seems that the three competitions stipulated will go ahead subject to some minor changes.
The first competition to kick-off will be a SARU u/20 Championship which is provisionally scheduled to start beginning February 2022 and ends end of March 2022. Seven unions will contest this single round competition. The Cell C Sharks, Cheetahs, Eastern Province, Leopards, Lions, Vodacom Bulls and DHL Western Province are the Unions currently listed.
It is expected that an u/20 squad will be announced after this competition to start with the preparations for the 2022 u/20 World Cup. Unfortunately, the World Cup's future is apparently not decided yet and could still be replaced with 2 or 3 international u/20 teams to tour South Africa.
We Discuss The SARU Planned Competitions For 2022
A SARU u/21 Championship is planned to be played over a double round format with again the Cell C Sharks, Cheetahs, Eastern Province, Leopards, Lions, Vodacom Bulls and Western Province currently listed as the competing unions. This competition is currently scheduled to start in August 2022 and should end in early November 2022.
A SARU u/19 Championship is planned for November 2022. This competition will be divided into two regions, Coastal and Inland, and will be played at two centralised stadiums as were the case in 2019. Western Province and the Lions hosted the league rounds in 2019. A final could be played between the winners of each region.
Apparently, the u/19 and u/21 competitions could overlap. Five teams will compete per Region in the u/19 competition. The Boland, Cell Sharks, Cheetahs, DHL Western Province and Eastern Province should play in the "Coastal Division" while the Leopards, Lions, Pumas, Valke and Vodacom Bulls should compete in the "Inland Region"
As mentioned before no final decisions were made by SARU yet.