A mix of excitement, curiosity, and just enough skepticism greeted the launch of the United Rugby Championship (URC) last week. The new tournament will replace the existing PRO14 and will see South Africa’s four biggest unions – the Bulls of Pretoria, the Lions of Johannesburg, the Stormers of Cape Town and the Sharks of Durban – join their Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Italian counterparts to form a 16-team league.
An emotion that was missing was astonishment. This is worth noting as it points to shifting perceptions in rugby. A generation ago, the idea of domestic teams travelling across the equator would have forced most fans to spit out their morning coffee.
“A lot has changed,” says Rudolf Straeuli, the once rampaging loose forward, who was a substitute during the Springboks’ victory over the All Blacks in the 1995 Rugby World Cup. “It wasn’t just fans who didn’t know too much about the north. Even us players were in the dark about the guys over there. There was an element of mystery about them.”
Straeuli, who now wears a suit to work as the chief executive of the Lions, cut his teeth in the amateur era. Back then, teams in the north might as well have existed on a different planet to the southern superpowers of New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. When the divide was crossed, it felt as if host nations were welcoming alien visitors who played a brand of the game as unrecognisable as their foreign tongues.
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