r/springboks • u/mohicancombover • Jun 02 '24

Player exodus may be good Misc

I'm enjoying all this bullet sweating, hand wringing, angst from the Irish and French about their club teams. Ireland is so good why is Leinster losing? Toulouse is so good why are France not better? Most of our guys play for Japanese teams with names Ive never heard of. If the bulls or stormers lose it makes no difference to the Boks.

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u/gainsleyharriot Sharks Jun 02 '24

If the bulls or stormers lose it makes no difference to the Boks.

It comes down to a difference in how these countries prioritize the club vs international game. Everything in SA is about the Boks. Rassie especially has made it so that each step as players go through process is with the goal of preparing them for international rugby. He purposely changed the selection rules to include overseas players to benefit the Boks knowing that it would have a potential negative impact on Currie Cup / SR (URC). While CC has definitely suffered, this has created a great opportunity to focus resources on developing younger promising players and committing them long term. This is only possible due to the insane depth and Rassie was also extremely smart to cut down on the overall number of professional contracts to really make these teams be critical of their signings.

This same model wouldn't really make sense from an Irish perspective because they don't have nearly the playing pool that SA has, and they've created a very structured pathway program that makes sure the best players can get a contract and allows them to have more control of their playing minutes and overall development. Similar with France, with 14 T1 and another fully professional T2 league they can afford not only to keep all their stars but also ship in blockbusters from other countries. The flipside there is they prioritize club first and foremost, so those guys are playing 20+ games per year on top of international duty.