John Plumtree, head coach of the Sharks, publicly criticized the demanding schedule of EPCR and URC competitions, citing its detrimental impact on player well-being and team performance. His concerns were echoed by other southern hemisphere teams struggling with an intense 12-month season. SA Rugby CEO Rian Oberholzer countered by urging local clubs to adapt and accept the current scheduling constraints.
To be, or not to be, playing rugby in the northern hemisphere?and EPCR competitions are grappling with, with seemingly insane workloads on the top players, and consequent injuries, crippling teams like the Bulls, Sharks and Stormers.
A subsequent interview that I conducted with the CEO of SA Rugby, Rian Oberholzer, and, more precisely, his curt response to Plumtree’s gripe, caused a stir of similar magnitude.“The local clubs should stop complaining and just get on with the job,” Oberholzer told me. “There aren’t many options concerning the scheduling of the tournaments.“Our teams want to compete in professional leagues, which the URC and Champions Cup offer.
Oberholzer does put a sobering and, of course, corporate spin on the complaints regularly raised, since the former Super Rugby outfits of South Africa traded the southern hemisphere showpiece for the greener grass north of the equator four years ago, by the likes of Plumtree, Jake White and John Dobson .Injuries and resting protocols, as stipulated by SA Rugby, forced Plumtree in December to take on Leicester without a host of the Durban-based side’s superstar Boks.
“When we are at full strength, we are a powerful side, and that is what you need in competitions like these,” he observed. Although that loss isn’t the end of the world as far as the Sharks’ URC aspirations are concerned, they did lose another two Boks – Aphelele Fassi and André Esterhuizen – to injury, prompting Plumtree to renew his “robot” narrative.
Rugby Scheduling Workload Injuries Player Welfare
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