The return of the Hollywoodbets Sharks offers hope that the third season of the South African participation in the prestigious Investec Champions Cup will be the one where a significant barrier is crossed for those Rugby World Cup winners thirsting to cross a new frontier.
If the Webb Ellis trophy is the Holy Grail for players at the international level, the Champions Cup is the one they most covet at the club or provincial level. Most of the home-based Springboks play for the Sharks, who last year did not play in the Champions Cup due to their failure the previous season in the testing and challenging Vodacom United Rugby Championship.
They struggled again in the URC last season, but thanks to them winning the EPCR Challenge Cup by beating Gloucester in the final at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London in May, this will be their first opportunity to bid for European glory since winning the RWC for a second time.
All top performers need new frontiers to cross, and the likes of Eben Etzebeth, who had such a big role to play in the Durban team’s Challenge Cup triumph, did not hold back in talking up the gravitas of being a Champions Cup winner when they secured their qualification by beating Gloucester.
“I really think South African fans are not aware of how big the Champions Cup is. You can see how the stadiums get full when you play overseas; everyone gets excited for the Champions Cup games,” said Etzebeth after his team had secured their spot.
“Hopefully, our fans can also start to see how big the competition is, it’s like a world cup for club rugby. Hopefully, when we play the Champions Cup group stages we can fill Hollywoodbets Kings Park and people will feel the excitement,”
The Sharks start what they hope will be their journey to Cardiff, where the Champions Cup finals weekend will be staged on the weekend of 23/24 May, by hosting Exeter Chiefs in Durban on Saturday. The Challenge Cup decider will be played on the Friday night before the main event, and Etzebeth will be hoping that he and his teammates’ experience of being part of that event last season and winning it, will put them in good stead to dine at the main table this time.
The Sharks have shown much-improved form this season in the URC and with Etzebeth, the most capped Bok, the double World Cup winning captain Siya Kolisi and other national leadership figures like Bongi Mbonambi, Lukhanyo Am and a host of others such as Aphelele Fassi and Makazole Mapimpi in the mix, the Sharks do look the best equipped local team to go all the way.
Vodacom Bulls and DHL Stormers have experience
But the Vodacom Bulls and the DHL Stormers would have learned from their experience of being in a second successive season of the competition in 2023/24, and they will both feel that there is an upward trajectory in their performance graph.
The Bulls, who open away against three times Champions Cup winners Saracens, are third on the URC log, and that is significant if you consider they have only played twice at their home base of Loftus. They were the near men in the URC last season, being beaten in a home final by Glasgow Warriors, and will be desperate to make up for that disappointment.
The Bulls don’t have as many Boks as the Sharks do, but they’ve bred a lot of Boks in recent times, with several players being blooded by national coach Rassie Erasmus in recent months and making a full list of their opportunities. Cameron Hanekom, the young looseforward, was the latest to make his debut in the final Test of the year in Cardiff, where he joined the likes of the currently injured Ruan Nortje, Elrigh Louw, Gerhard Steenekamp and Johan Grobbelaar in seeing their ships come in at international level.
The Stormers were the inaugural winners of the URC in 2022 and they take that experience of winning an international trophy into their third quest in the Champions Cup. They arguably crossed a barrier last season when they beat the then-reigning champions, La Rochelle, in an exciting Pool game at the DHL Stadium.
The Stormers were desperately unlucky not to win another game against La Rochelle, this time the round of 16 games in Cape Town, and will remember the emotion they felt after Manie Libbok missed the last-gasp conversion that would have secured a historic triumph. Coach John Dobson felt that his men did well to just get out of the group stage, as they were in the so-called ‘Pool of Death’, which also featured both of the previous year’s finalists, La Rochelle and Leinster, as well as previous winners Leicester Tigers.
The Pools
The Sharks might be in the tougher group this year. They are in Pool 1 with champions Toulouse, who are the most successful team in Champions Cup history with six titles, as well as the coming team in France, Bordeaux Begles, Exeter Chiefs, Leicester Tigers and Ulster. There are no weak teams in that group.
The Bulls have English champions Northampton Saints to contend with in their group, along with Saracens. The Bulls beat Saracens in Pretoria last year, but Saracens will be eager to avenge that result when they start their respective campaigns at the Saracens home ground in Barnet on Saturday night.
There is no such thing as an easy group in the Champions Cup, as shown by Pool 4, where the Stormers find themselves vying with newly crowned URC champions Glasgow Warriors, Racing 92, Sale Sharks, Toulon and Harlequins. The mighty Leinster and the recent two-time champions, La Rochelle, once again find themselves in the same group - Pool 2.
First-round Investec Champions Cup group fixtures
Bath v La Rochelle (Friday 22.00)
Hollywoodbets Sharks v Exeter Chiefs (Saturday 15.00)
Clermont-Auvergne v Benetton (Saturday 15.00)
DHL Stormers v Toulon (Saturday 17.15)
Northampton Saints v Castres Olympique (Saturday 17.15)
Munster v Stade Francais (Saturday 19.30)
Saracens v Vodacom Bulls (Saturday 19.30)
Glasgow Warriors v Sale Sharks (Saturday 22.00)
Racing 92 v Harlequins (Saturday 22.00)
Bordeaux Begles v Leicester Tigers (Sunday 15.00)
Toulouse v Ulster (Sunday 17.15)
Bristol Bears v Leinster (Sunday 19.30)