JM2K6 wrote: ↑Sat Apr 20, 2024 1:36 pm
Oh, my bad - I thought we were talking about the Super Rugby teams, not the lower tier stuff. But I know you're trolling if you're claiming the Cheetahs and the Kings are why Scotland and Ireland got better. You may as well point to the introduction of the Italian teams. Scotland hit that historical highest rank in 2017 - i.e. before the Cheetahs + Kings had any impact - and Ireland had turned into the side capable of turning over NZ in 2016, then beat the world #1 side England in 2017. Their climb up the ladder was well under way.
They were both Super Rugby sides, but like I said the Kings had a lot of problems and were poor, the Cheetahs had a decent squad though.
Their DoR was Franco Smith who went on to coach Italy and then Glasgow. Their backline had: Ruan Pienaar, Shaun Venter, Johan Goosen, Fred Zeilinga, Francois Venter, Rayno Benjamin, Mapimpi, Sergeal Petersen, Raymond Rhule, Rosko Specman, Cecil Afrika, Clayton Blommetjies, Malcom Jaer. Their pack had: Aranos Coetzee, Ox Nche, Dweba, Torsten van Jaarsveld, Neethling Fouche, JP du Preez, Reniel Hugo, Hilton Lobberts, Oupa Mohoje, Henco Venter, Jasper Wiese, Chris Dry.
JM2K6 wrote: ↑Sat Apr 20, 2024 1:36 pm
Which competition are we talking about? Can't be the URC. Ulster and Connacht are piss, the Welsh sides useless, Glasgow are good and Edinburgh OK, Italian sides are improving but are easy meat in Euro competition. No-one outside of Leinster genuinely threatens the business end of the Champions Cup [edit: not talking the SA teams here]. The Saffer sides haven't been as good this season as last, but as it's an extremely small sample size I won't draw any conclusions from that.
So you rate Leinster and after them Munster/Glasgow and maybe Edinburgh. The Cheetahs beat all four of those sides in the Pro, because going to Bloem and paying a half decent Cheetahs side is hard, if you take a weakened squad then a blowout loss is possible. The Saders have lost to the Cheetahs in Bloem with McCaw and Carter and all the rest of that era of All Black Crusaders playing.
The obvious point is, the teams need to have players qualified to play for your country in them to work as feeder sides. A strong French club side isn't normally about just the French players, a URC side is almost entirely about players eligible for the national side. The next obvious point is the career path of an excellent player could involve playing in a weak side against strong opponents. Producing a strong test side isn't about every club/province being the Crusaders.
A lot of Saffas thought the URC would be as weak as you say, I had been watching the Pro so it was less of a surprise to me. A season/s of matches home and away isn't the same as a one off matches, and we're the only set of fans which can directly compare the URC and Super Rugby having watched our sides in both.
There's almost no easy away matches in the URC, mostly because the weaker sides have stronger packs than the weaker sides in Super Rugby. In Super Rugby the Sunwolves were a joke team, the Force and Rebels weren't much better. There would usually be one weak Kiwi side, often the Blues or Landers, who would struggle even at home if they lost the forward battle. If the Sharks pulled a Sunwolves/Force/Rebels/Blues/Landers tour, you would be more worried about the length of the tour than any huge concern about dropping matches and coming away with almost nothing. The URC is completely different, with the exception of Zebre any of the sides could win at home, even the Dragons are going to do something on defence and in the forwards a side has to do something to beat them.
Harder to measure the top teams against eachother.
From the Aussie sides one or two of Brumbies/Tahs/Reds would be good. From a Sharks perspective the Brumbies were always consistent and never poor but not excellent since the 00s, Tahs were the best Aussie side and normally a bit above the Brumbies, Reds erratic sometimes excellent sometimes shit. The strength of Aussie sides was always about which team had their best forwards, which was almost always Tahs first then Brumbies, then nothing. Aussie Super Rugby sides as a group would struggle to live with the Welsh URC sides as a group, home/away over a season. The expectation would be the best Aussie side, probably the Tahs, doing well against the best Welsh side which would probably be Ospreys (but that expectation could be misplaced, Ospreys just beat the Stomps in Cape Town which was a rare achievement for the Tahs over 3 decades of Super Rugby), but then there's the awful Force/Rebels (which the Kings our 6th side could beat, but then they beat the Tahs as well, and drew with the Brumbies, only the Reds have a 100% record against the Kings out of the Aussie sides but they only played them once ... when you see your 6th side dealing with every Aussie side their combined efforts failing to produce a positive win ratio against the Kings, it opens your eyes somewhat), a Brumbies side probably around the Tahs level but weaker in the pack, and the Reds who could be as bad as the Force/Rebels or better than all of them. It wouldn't surprise if the Welsh sides came out on top, they have better forwards.
From the Kiwi sides. Saders were a level above anything, a complete team and consistently excellent. Next best the Canes. Next best probably the Chiefs. Below the Saders it's less consistent though, everyone remembers the excellent Canes/Chiefs/Landers/Blues sides, they don't remember the blowouts they took against SA teams though. The Sharks played Kiwi sides 120 times, 57 wins, 60 losses, 3 draws, of the losses 18 were against the Saders. In NZ the Sharks played 64, won 22, lost 39, draw 3, the Blues and Landers didn't have positive winning records against the Sharks in NZ. A side like the Sharks who haven't won a title (sob) don't get this record if Kiwis are invincible. Basically the Saders are normally better than every other team, and normally there's one or two other NZ sides about on that level but which teams those are changes.
I expect most Saffas would say something like overall the URC is stronger than Super Rugby but not playing the top 3 or so Kiwi sides is a loss.
