THE Super Rugby season has been suspended for the foreseeable future and it joins the rest of the sporting world by putting their programme on hold due to the global pandemic, Covid-19/Coronavirus.
The rugby world has been left in limbo with the Pro14 being suspended indefinitely and questions have been raised about how SANZAAR will reschedule the suspended fixtures and whether or not the Southern Hemisphere rugby organisation will make adjustments that will suit all teams involved.
ALSO READ: Kearsney cancels Easter Rugby Festival following Covid-19 crisis
It’s been reported by various rugby publications that New Zealand and South Africa’s respective rugby unions are planning domestic tournaments for their Super Rugby outfits, in order to keep them match-fit. Ideally, the new competition could include the Super Rugby franchises: the Vodacom Bulls, Sharks, Lions and Stormers to compete against the PRO14 teams: the Cheetahs and Kings as well as a couple of teams from the Currie Cup.
While New Zealand rugby is still in talks about hosting its own domestic tournament that could run for four weeks, Australia’s Super Rugby outfits have agreed to run a domestic competition. The competition in Australia will involve the four Australian Super Rugby teams playing within country only, in a round-robin format, beginning on 3 April.
This could be ideal preparation for South Africa, Australia and New Zealand players going into the international test matches in June. There is still uncertainty about the Jaguares and the Sunwolves’ plans.
ALSO READ: Covid-19 could threaten rugby’s schedule
South African schoolboy rugby has also been put on hold with schools being closed due to the virus. Easter Rugby Tournaments like the Kearsney Easter Rugby Festival have already been cancelled and for the senior first-team players (matrics), their season could hang in the balance.
On the Panel this week, we feature two fans and two schoolboy rugby coaches.
Coaches, Matthew Everitt (DHS) and Camillo Rosa (St Henry’s Marist College) have their say on how Covid-19 will disrupt their season.
Matthew (High School): There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the 2020 schoolboy rugby season due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s the time of the year that all schoolboys across the nation look forward to and anticipate with great excitement. Easter tournaments have been postponed and cancelled which is seen as great preparation going into the second term fixtures as this is where teams and structures start clicking and falling into place, so it’s a massive loss.
With schools only looking to re-open on 15 April, it seems as if two more fixtures will have to fall away. It’s stressful times for strength and conditioning coaches as programmes would now have to be put together to ensure the boys stay fit and conditioned in this off month, and hope the boys keep working hard and motivated. As a coach, all the hard work and preparation that’s been done in the pre-season will now come to show when we get back as there won’t be much time to get back into before the first game rolls up.
Camillo (Primary School): Well, coming from a school where our rugby is actively involved in other sports, we started our pre-season rugby in the last three weeks of school before the Northlands Rugby Festival in April which was cancelled obviously due to the virus. We planned to take 20 boys to the Northlands Festival and rotate in games to get an idea of what we have and a starting line-up for the up-and-coming season, to now going back to school and playing our first game in the first week, not knowing who to start or the boys not knowing any plays. Other schools will be in the same boat as well that we compete with.
It’s also frustrating to know that we might not even have a rugby season to play if the virus spreads drastically which means Grade 7 boys don’t get to play their final year of primary school rugby. Looking at the season ahead which after the festival you have 8/9 fixtures to be played and now we sit there thinking that for the first three weeks of the season, it will be in a shambles because the boys and coaches will have to teach everything that was taught in the pre-season, again in the actual rugby season. Which also makes goal-setting hard for the season. Tough times ahead for coaches across the smaller schools who are all in the same situation.
Fans of the week, Ryan Schutte and Matthew Kirkham reflect on how Super Rugby and it’s fans have been impacted by Covid-19.
Ryan: Well I went to the game last week which was the last game due to be played until they were forced to stop.
As a Sharks’ fan, I’ve been more optimistic about this season compared to other seasons gone by. We’ve got a local test here against Scotland which now hangs in the balance. I also thought it would serve as a great opportunity for our new coach to settle ,in opposed to coming up against the likes of the All Blacks. I’ve learned two things from this virus. The first being that it’s going to inconvenience everyone and it’s something that we have to just come to terms with. And secondly, that there are bigger issues than sport and we’ve taken sport for granted and always assumed that it would be on at our leisure.
Matthew: Having no Super Rugby on has really given us not much to look forward to on weekends. It’s really been a time of watching highlights of old matches and just reading articles about what could happen in the future with Super Rugby. The Super Rugby season will be all done this year as I don’t think they will be able to catch up on matches once it starts to settle but I’m happy to see NZ is trying to get the NZ SuperRrugby teams to form their own little competition so at least NZ teams are getting game time. I’m sure when it comes to the end of year tours for international teams this whole virus would’ve settled down and matches will be able to take place and rugby fans will have plenty to enjoy!
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