Craig Ray

Watching the opening weekend of the PRO14 was like unwrapping a shiny gift and marvelling at all its features and curves.

It was exciting – a voyage of discovery that threw up a few surprises and some small concerns. It’s like a new TV that is a massive step up from your old model, but the picture isn’t as sharp as you’d expected, or the speakers not as ‘doef-doef’ as you’d hoped.

Prior to the tournament, coaches such as Brendan Venter and Franco Smith, who both have first hand experience of playing and coaching in Britain and Europe, warned that the standard of PRO14 was high.

Since the turn of the century, clubs in Europe have embraced professionalism quicker and with more focus than most of the southern hemisphere’s biggest clubs.

Purpose-built training facilities with indoor pitches, coupled with big money spent on turf and pitch technology, medical centres and conditioning and nutrition have seen them turn decent talent into exceptional players.

In South Africa there is a tendency to turn supreme talent into mediocre plodders.

The two SA sides in the PRO14, the Cheetahs and Southern Kings are admittedly the two least successful Super Rugby franchises, and the way they were outplayed and out-thought for the most part in round one highlighted some of their issues.

The Kings have been thrown together for a third time in less than 20 months and are again rebuilding. It’s hardly out of the textbook of professionalism, yet there they were against the defending PRO14 champions, the Scarlets, who are the definition of professionalism.

The Cheetahs, still struggling to understand defence, were similarly blown away by Ulster whose South African imports all caught the eye.

During his time in Durban, Jean Deysel could barely catch and pass at the Sharks and was dealt more cards than a professional blackjack player. At Ulster, he suddenly looks world class.

Marcell Coetzee, who has always been a class player, appears to have raised his game another notch. The physicality to explode into contact is still there, but now there is a willingness to also look for an offload or, heaven forbid, attack space.

We’re only dealing with the evidence of one weekend of PRO14 here, but from what we’ve seen, most Super Rugby sides outside of New Zealand would battle to beat the top sides – especially away.

The British & Irish Lions’ recent tour to New Zealand, where they were marginally second-best to the All Blacks (although the series was drawn), was compelling evidence that, with the exception of NZ, the gap between the southern and northern hemisphere’s is closed. It might have even swung north.

This is good news for South Africa. There was a concern that playing in the PRO14 would somehow weaken our rugby because we wouldn’t regularly be playing against Kiwi teams. Now we know not to worry.

Among others, Ulster, Scarlets, Munster, Leinster and Glasgow have shown that the future is bright. Competition against those teams will require skill and precision to win. They will force the Cheetahs and Kings to raise their standard or be left behind.

South African fans and southern hemisphere cheerleaders in general need to accept that the gap is gone and the only way to compete and remain relevant is by embracing the change and accepting that abundant talent is not enough to get by.

The PRO14 is a shiny gift that, if we learn how to use it properly, will be very rewarding.