SA Rugby president backtracks on comments following Champions Cup controversy amid South Africa’s ‘unique problem’
Bulls taking on Glasgow Warriors in the Champions Cup and SA Rugby president Mark Alexander.
SA Rugby have now insisted that a possible Investec Champions Cup exit is not being considered as president Mark Alexander reiterated his desire to see a true global calendar.
Alexander spoke to the media following the governing body’s annual meeting last week and voiced his concern about player welfare.
He claimed that they “will have to decide which competitions will be retained and which ones we can drop”, with it understood that their Champions Cup future was being considered.
Sharks owner’s threat
That was met with a backlash from the South African franchises with Sharks owner Marco Masotti threatening to cut funding should they be taken out of the competition.
“Let me be clear — I will no longer fund the losses (and all of the owners will feel the same way) if we pull out of the Champions Cup,” Masotti told KickOff Rugby.
Alexander has seemingly backtracked since his comments on Thursday, suggesting that the possible Champions Cup departure was just “speculation”.
He also stated that the July review is simply “a negotiated balance” between competition commitments and not necessarily a meeting that could result in a radical decision.
“We’ve only got so many weeks in a year,” he told News24.
“We play for 11 months in a year and nowhere else do they do that. We can continue going like this until we implode, or we can find another way of doing it.
“We have our international calendar and our URC and EPCR calendar. It creates a bottleneck for our player downtime, and that means our players are not available for either the franchises or South Africa at some point in time.”
SA Rugby warned of Champions Cup backlash as Sharks owner issues ‘clear’ threat to governing body
South Africa and New Zealand at odds
Ultimately, a global calendar would benefit South Africa greatly and SA Rugby are big supporters of moving the Rugby Championship to align with the Six Nations.
NZ Rugby oppose the idea, however, due to the knock-on effect it could have on Super Rugby Pacific and their schedule in general.
Super Rugby currently runs from February to June but that would probably have to move should the Rugby Championship be played early in the year.
“World Rugby has been speaking about a global calendar for the last 14 years now. A global calendar would help us,” Alexander said.
“If we played the Rugby Championship at the same time as Six Nations, that frees up a lot of space on the calendar.
“That’s where the problem starts, but it’s unique to South Africa because we play in the south and the north.”