2022 rugby WISH LIST: What we’d love to see!

As an action-packed year of rugby looms, starting with the resumption of the United Rugby Championship in the coming weeks, we pick three things we’d love to see in 2022.

More ambition from the Boks

The 2021 season was a fascinating one for the Springboks, with the primary focus placed on beating the British & Irish Lions, which was duly achieved.

However, after missing out on international action throughout 2020, last year was also about rebuilding to some extent as the Boks had little option but to prioritise substance over style.

In the final Rugby Championship game against the All Blacks, though, the Boks proved they are more than capable of balancing intent and ambition with ball in hand in conjunction with their more traditional physical power up front.

The Boks will begin a new Test season with a highly-anticipated series against Wales in July before the Rugby Championship looms, and it would be good to see the national team start to offer more variety and threats on attack.

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United Rugby Championship to start living up to its hype

The first few rounds of action in the URC have been a seriously stop-start affair due to Covid-19 issues, and it’s compromised the integrity of the tournament.

After the four South African teams travelled to the northern hemisphere for the first time – and without their Springbok stars – each side could only manage a solitary win, but were expected to launch a more meaningful response once back on home soil.

However, the first set of fixtures in South Africa had to be re-scheduled after the detection of the Omicron variant threw the competition into disarray, while there have been numerous postponements since then.

It’s shone a spotlight on the perils of a cross-hemisphere competition in the age of Covid-19, and one can only hope that a period of stability will at least allow for the first season of this competition to be completed without it all becoming a bit of a farce.

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Cheslin Kolbe to get back to his best

Towards the end of last year, Kolbe completed a long-awaited comeback from what he described as a ‘most frustrating injury’ as he made his debut for new French club Toulon.

Before that comeback, Kolbe had not been in action since facing Argentina in August, but he finally recovered from a serious knee injury that he sustained in training during the second half of the Rugby Championship.

The highlight of 2021 for the speedster was of course his scintillating try in the decisive third Test against the British & Irish Lions, but it was otherwise a rather quiet year for a man of his class.

There would be few better sights in 2022 than to see Kolbe return to his best fitness and form as the Boks start to build towards the 2023 World Cup.

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