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.

But at provincial level, to quote poet William Butler Yeats, “the centre cannot hold, things fall apart". That is because South Africa is the only rugby country in the world that does not have an off season. In Europe, there is a three month total break from the end of May until September.

In the south, the likes of New Zealand and Australia say goodbye to rugby from November until March. This means their professional players have a total physical and mental break. They recharge their batteries and when the new season dawns, they are good to go.

A few weeks ago, Springbok boss Rassie Erasmus suggested a solution to the rugby world. It was more in hope than conviction that he wondered if New Zealand and Australia would agree to move the Rugby Championship from its July to September window to the beginning of the year, say March and April.

It is highly unlikely that the Springboks' main foes will help them out. You can’t blame them —playing rugby in summer is madness, and as I have said before, the words of Rudyard Kipling ring true, “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun".

So if the status quo for South African rugby is not going to change in terms of the 12-month season, what can be done to make the best of it?

The recent two-match visit of Leinster to South Africa provided an answer.

Leinster coach Leo Cullen left 14 Ireland internationals in Dublin and toured with fringe players, many of them still in the Leinster Academy. They lost to the Bulls in the last minute at Loftus Versfeld and in Durban they stunned a Sharks team enriched with nine Springboks.

Some of their players looked like they are yet to start shaving yet they saw off the star-studded Sharks.

Rassie has himself said he is a great admirer of the systems Irish rugby have in place to identify and nourish young talent. He saw it first hand when he coached Munster in 2016 and 2017.

Leinster and Munster spot talent at school level and put huge energy into making sure the majority of the youngsters make it to first-class level.

To be fair, it probably helps them that they don’t have the player numbers of South Africa. It makes it easier to identify talent and it is easier to work with a select few rather than a vast quantity.

South Africa’s top franchises do have academies but are they top priority? The main unions still favour the model of buying players above producing their own.

Leinster seldom buy players because they have invested heavily in bringing through their own players.

SA rugby needs to seriously look at the Leinster model that has their youth beating or coming close to beating the best South Africa has to offer.