{"id":592763,"date":"2026-05-19T16:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T16:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/592763\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T16:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T16:28:09","slug":"sa-rugby-president-backtracks-amid-champions-cup-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/592763\/","title":{"rendered":"SA Rugby president backtracks amid Champions Cup controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

SA Rugby have now insisted that a possible Investec Champions Cup exit is not being considered as president Mark Alexander reiterated his desire to see a true global calendar.<\/p>\n

Alexander spoke to the media following the governing body\u2019s annual meeting last week and voiced his concern about player welfare.<\/p>\n

He claimed that they \u201cwill have to decide which competitions will be retained and which ones we can drop\u201d, with it understood that their Champions Cup future was being considered.<\/p>\n

Sharks owner\u2019s threat<\/p>\n

That was met with a backlash from the South African<\/a> franchises with Sharks owner Marco Masotti threatening to cut funding should they be taken out of the competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me be clear \u2014 I will no longer fund the losses (and all of the owners will feel the same way) if we pull out of the Champions Cup,\u201d Masotti told KickOff Rugby.<\/p>\n

Alexander has seemingly backtracked since his comments on Thursday, suggesting that the possible Champions Cup<\/a> departure was just \u201cspeculation\u201d.<\/p>\n

He also stated that the July review is simply \u201ca negotiated balance\u201d between competition commitments and not necessarily a meeting that could result in a radical decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve only got so many weeks in a year,\u201d he told News24.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe play for 11 months in a year and nowhere else do they do that. We can continue going like this until we implode, or we can find another way of doing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have our international calendar and our URC and EPCR calendar. It creates a bottleneck for our player downtime, and that means our players are not available for either the franchises or South Africa at some point in time.\u201d<\/p>\n

SA Rugby warned of Champions Cup backlash as Sharks owner issues \u2018clear\u2019 threat to governing body<\/a><\/p>\n

South Africa and New Zealand at odds<\/p>\n

Ultimately, a global calendar would benefit South Africa greatly and SA Rugby are big supporters of moving the Rugby Championship to align with the Six Nations.<\/p>\n

NZ Rugby oppose the idea, however, due to the knock-on effect it could have on Super Rugby Pacific and their schedule in general.<\/p>\n

Super Rugby currently runs from February to June but that would probably have to move should the Rugby Championship be played early in the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorld Rugby has been speaking about a global calendar for the last 14 years now. A global calendar would help us,\u201d Alexander said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we played the Rugby Championship at the same time as Six Nations, that frees up a lot of space on the calendar.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s where the problem starts, but it\u2019s unique to South Africa because we play in the south and the north.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: New Zealand hold firm on global calendar debate that \u2018doesn\u2019t work\u2019 as South Africa don\u2019t have a \u2018compelling case\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SA Rugby have now insisted that a possible Investec Champions Cup exit is not being considered as president…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[88635,348,120846,1244,50,5903,5341,4247,101,34134,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-592763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-bulls","tag-home-page","tag-investec-champions-cup","tag-lions","tag-news","tag-rugby","tag-sharks","tag-south-africa","tag-sports","tag-stormers","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}