Bob Skinstad has blasted rugby’s failure to implement a global calendar and hit back at continued criticism of South African participation in Europe’s flagship club tournament.

The Investec Champions Cup kicks off this weekend with the World Cup-winning nation involved for a third straight year, despite being based in a different hemisphere.

The participation of South Africa‘s leading franchises in a competition much-loved since 1995 in its original European Cup guise was not universally welcomed at the outset and continues to sharply divide opinion.

Enhances the competition

Skinstad, a former captain of the Springboks and now co-owner of French second division club Beziers, has had enough of the sniping and insists the presence of the Sharks, Stormers and Bulls enhances the 24-team showpiece.

“We punch way above our weight,” he told Planet Rugby ahead of the Durban-based Sharks hosting Exeter Chiefs, Toulon’s visit to Cape Town to face the Stormers and the London clash between Saracens and the Bulls.

“We’ve got fewer rugby players than are available in England, definitely less economic firepower in terms of being able to hold the players, and more – and more difficult – travel to do than anyone else.

“Yet we are consistently at the top of the URC [United Rugby Championship], we won the Challenge Cup last year through the Sharks, and we’ve only just arrived.

“I can completely understand the reticence; it’s my playground, I want to play in it; who’s this new individual? I get that. It’s a very human, anthropological sort of negativity, But the world’s changing.”

Rugby is trapped between its love of history and ‘the way things were’ and the dire economic need to grow the game away from the past so beloved of many in the sport.

Leading clubs are going bust and national unions are desperately strapped for cash, despite the counter impression given by the executive pay hike at the top of the Rugby Football Union.

World Rugby last year announced a major calendar overhaul to finally align the two hemispheres but that does not come into play before 2026 at the earliest, if it does actually happen, by which time goodness knows what the financial health of the sport will be.

“We’ve been looking at a global calendar for 30 years – I mean, for goodness sake,” said Skinstad.

“If we had a global season for rugby we would get the best players consistently playing in the best teams against the best players. But we don’t because we’ve got egos and backgrounds and different economic drivers and levers etc.

“And, to be honest, a whole bunch of old men in charge of the game can’t sit around a table and agree a calendar. That’s the fundamental principle of the thing. Which is extraordinary.

“It’s like families coming together and arguing ‘where are we going to go for our end-of-year Christmas lunch?’ And never getting as Christmas lunch together because people want to go to different places.

“I’m like, ‘Guys, we’ve got an amazing Christmas lunch table laid out, let’s just go to the same one’.”

Perhaps, if it had come earlier the sport would be thriving and Wasps, Worcester, London Irish, Jersey Reds and the Melbourne Rebels would still be operating rather than consigned to the history books.

Maybe, also, South Africa’s top players would still be plying their trade in Super Rugby, the southern hemisphere’s premier club competition, and New Zealand, Australia and a couple of Pacific island teams would not be playing amongst themselves in a format that nobody would claim is an improvement.

“I say this in a caveated format because I absolutely love New Zealand,” added Skinstad. “I love New Zealand rugby, I love what it stands for, I love what they’ve done for world rugby etc.

“But in Super Rugby times they had it cushy because everyone had to go to them. They had the bulk of the franchises, they had the bulk of the income, they carried Australia through to that and Australia benefited.

“When Australia had fewer teams they did better because they were concentrated in smaller areas. You didn’t have to be spread out around the whole place.

“Watered that garden for them”

“I think South Africa actually watered that garden for them. When that water was cut off I think they thought, ‘Oh, we’ll be fine, we’ll just play the Blues against the Crusaders every week and everyone will just turn up and watch the same game’.

“They’re suddenly realising, actually, the variety is what made it Super. 12, maybe up to Super 14, was about as good as it could get, because we had the best of them, the best of Australia and the best of us.

“When it became bigger than that every second or third week you’ve got a hiding to nothing for a start-up team with a start-up mentality and an interim coach and then it doesn’t really take off. That’s what they’ve been suffering.

“I think they realise that now. In conversation with a lot of my contemporaries at the World Cup who were playing at that time and now do the speaking circuit or punditry, they were all very disappointed they didn’t have the challenge of the South African teams.

“Just to sharpen the knife, so to speak. Because you get to a World Cup and you haven’t been tackled by a South African for 11 months. It’s different.”

It most certainly is. The good news for the northern hemisphere’s top players is they instead get to sample that from this weekend onwards. Of course, they might not immediately appreciate it.