Former Springbok and Stormers captain Corné Krige says the Champions Cup travel schedule and short turnaround time between matches, especially regarding fixtures featuring European teams playing in South Africa, isn’t a major issue.
Following Toulon’s Champions Cup clash against the Stormers in Gqeberha in the opening round of the competition, former Wales flyhalf Dan Biggar raised concerns over the toll traveling to South Africa for a one-off game takes on European teams and detailed his team’s “savage” journey to the Windy City.
In his Daily Mail column, the veteran No 10 wrote: “Last weekend, along with my Toulon teammates, I spent 32 hours on flights just to get to South Africa for our first game of this season’s Champions Cup."
It was a savage journey to Port Elizabeth. We arrived at 5pm on Tuesday, but the players were so knackered we only had one proper training session before the game.
Biggar went on to state that the travel schedule to the Republic for a single game negatively impacts performance and added that the Champions Cup could benefit from an approach similar to the United Rugby Championship, which includes two-match visits as opposed to traveling great distances for a single run-out.
Krige, however, isn’t making too much of the travel schedule.
We compare travel in the Investec Cup to travel in Super Rugby, and I mean in Super Rugby we used to fly halfway around the world and then play a few days later, so I don’t think it's too bad.
He went on to highlight a different issue that might be worth addressing – the fact that South African players don’t really have an off-season anymore, which naturally makes competing in competitions as strong and demanding as the Champions Cup a tough task.
The South African international rugby calendar, starting in July through to the following June, features the Incoming Tour in July, the Rugby Championship, and the End of Year Tour in November, with local players who are involved in the Springbok set-up withdrawn from the early stages of the United Rugby Championship for national duty.
While there are resting protocols in place to monitor players’ workloads, the packed rugby schedule is still a major challenge, particularly for South African players considering the switch from one competition to another with no real off-season considering that there isn’t much alignment between the various tournaments in terms of resting blocks.
It's this time of the year that we're not used to playing, which is usually our off-season, now, suddenly, we're playing in some serious competitions. I think that's maybe the issue we need to look at. But, in general, I don't think the [Champions Cup] travel is such a big problem. There's not a massive time difference and that doesn't make it that much more difficult for the players.
