Talk of the United Rugby Championship moving to a two-division format amid a further expansion appear to be somewhat wide of the mark.
It was the coach of South African side the Cheetahs, Hawies Fourie, who set the cat among the pigeons with his comments. He said there were high hopes his team would be offered a route back to the cross-border competition, with plans to be finalised by the end of the month.
Having been part of the PRO14 for four years from 2017 - reaching the play-offs in their first campaign - they were ditched ahead of this season with the Bulls, Sharks, Lions and Stormers taking over as South Africa’s representatives in the augmented URC. That has left the Cheetahs competing only on the domestic front, in the Currie Cup, where they have won seven out of seven. However, in an interview with Sunday newspaper Rapport, Fourie made some startling claims.
READ MORE: Nigel Walker reveals new Welsh rugby plan
“There is a meeting at the end of April with role players for a kind of B-division for the URC,” he said. “It will be called the United Rugby Shield. However, it is not in our hands. SA Rugby has to come to the party. It’s been coming for a long time now. We have been promised since December 2020 that there will be a competition.
“We have been two years further since the promise, so it’s a long time for us. But it looks promising, so we hope it will happen and that things will be finalised by the end of the month.”
His comments were picked up on widely and sparked speculation that the URC was heading for a two-division set-up, potentially with promotion and relegation. But speaking to various contacts involved in the competition, it would seem there are no such plans in places. Essentially, the message has been “It’s news to us”.
There was a URC meeting as recently as last week and it’s my understanding the matter was not raised there. While there are teams, such as the Cheetahs, who want to come on board, there are no concrete plans for expansion, with the focus being firmly on making the current set-up successful.
The word I am hearing is if there is to be a secondary competition in the future, it will be an U23 type of tournament. There are no plans to have more than four South African sides in the main event.
The quartet from the Rainbow Nation are joined in the 16-team URC by four sides from both Ireland and Wales, plus two apiece from Scotland and Italy. Three of the South African teams - the Stormers, Sharks and the Bulls - figure in the top eight in the table, putting them on course for the end-of-season play-offs.
