A recognition that playing Vodacom United Rugby Championship derbies over the festive period is new to South Africans has led to two local derbies being shifted to enable players to spend time with their loved ones.
While there will still be two South African derbies during the festive period, both will be in Cape Town after the coastal franchises accepted in the spirit of goodwill a request to have two games shifted to January.
There will now be just one local derby over the weekend of December 22/23, with the Vodacom Bulls heading to Cape Town to play the DHL Stormers in what should be an appetising north/south showdown attractive to visitors to the city that is a popular summer destination. The other clash that was scheduled for that weekend between the Hollywoodbets Sharks and Emirates Lions has been moved on request to 6 January.
The Stormers will play their second game of the festive period later that week when they host the Sharks in the coastal derby, with that game scheduled for the night before New Year’s Eve, 30 December. However, the match initially scheduled for that night between the Bulls and Lions has been moved to 27 January.
“We saw that there was a weekend open in January in the Six Nations period where we could move the game to, and that would free up players for the Christmas period, so we moved the game for that reason and that reason alone,” Sharks CEO Eduard Coetzee explained.
“We still have one game over the festive season, so we feel it was a fair request and all the teams are aligned. There is nothing strange about that, it was just that instead of having us play over the Christmas and New Year’s weekend, we decided to free up Christmas so that our players could be with their families.”
Bulls Director of Rugby Jake White concurred and said it was felt the players would benefit from being with their loved ones over the Christmas period.
“To be fair, playing over Christmas is a bit tough for us, and it is a disadvantage because everyone is on holiday and the coastal teams have their families there, while we would be away from ours. We could move it and the fact they were happy to move it helped us.
“I understand why they do it at the coast because the whole of the inland population is there on holiday, but it is a massive disadvantage to us. We would rather play the Lions here, and as it turned out last year playing the Sharks and Stormers on consecutive weekends was tough. So I’m glad that between the CEOs they could find a win-win.”
The moves mean the Lions won’t play any derbies over the Christmas period and will have a defacto two-week break instead.