The South African franchises have increased the quality of the United Rugby Championship, according to Leinster head coach Leo Cullen.
In the competition’s first season, the southern hemisphere teams overcame a slow start, especially away from home, to set up an all-South African final as the Stormers took on the Bulls.
They appear to have pushed on this campaign, with all four sides beginning 2022/23 in fine fashion. The Stormers are unbeaten while the other three have only lost one game each.
Thrilling battle
That was demonstrated when Leinster and Sharks went head-to-head in a thrilling battle at the RDS Arena in Dublin.
Although the Irishmen claimed a 54-34 triumph, the visitors showed their quality and were in the game at the hour mark.
Cullen’s men eventually pulled away late on, but the South African outfits will once again be a threat for the title.
“It is great to see this type of test now,” Leinster’s head coach said.
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“It’s a proper competition, a proper test, they have to go through Europe (Champions and Challenge Cups) now as well which they did not have to do last year.
“If you think back to the start of the season last year, they were coming up to Europe and not going particularly well. Every trip they do, they are getting better and better, the familiarity.
“We only do one trip going down to South Africa so it is a totally different experience for the South African teams coming up here; they get better with the trips.
“When you are in South Africa, it is the number one game in terms of where rugby sits as a team sport when you compare it to soccer, Gaelic football and hurling, whereas it’s one, two, three and four down there. They live and breathe it.
“You can see some of the size profile, the speed profile, the skill, jackalers over the ball, some of the front-rowers that they have, it is a proper challenge.”
Cullen also wants the spectacle the teams put on at the weekend to be repeated regularly as the season goes on.
Entertainment
“I think that’s what the crowd want to see – all action performances,” he said.
“A huge amount of work goes into the refereeing of the game and refs are under a lot of pressure, but I think that’s the game you want to see.
“Last week it was very difficult with the conditions in Ravenhill so when you get a nice day like today you want to see a good entertaining game and get people to come back and watch it again.”
Leinster’s focus now shifts to Friday’s URC clash where they take on Connacht in an intriguing Irish derby.
“It’s two derby games we’re looking at now, away in Connacht on Friday, which is always a tough place to go,” Cullen added.
“We played them a couple of times in Galway last year. The European game in particular, you had two sets of players with everything on the line.
“They had a good win last night and will take a lot of confidence from that, we’ll have to put in a decent week’s prep on what is a short week.”