Crusaders lauded as rugby's 'global dream team'

The Crusaders have been lauded as “the global dream team” in South Africa and their influence will be sorely missed if the rugby-mad republic follows through with plans to take their provincial game to Europe.

With New Zealand set to forge ahead with alternative Super Rugby plans, it appears South Africa’s leading teams will try to join an expanded PRO14 championship up north.

Ending the battle against the classy red and blacks would hit South African teams and their fans, according to one of their leading rugby writers, Robert Houwing at Sport 24.

He felt it would be hard to look past the Crusaders “for the biggest sense of modern-day aura and sparkling entertainment value among rugby franchises or clubs the world over”.

They continue to be ”standard bearers in excellence and ambition” and he would back them against any equivalent-level team to determine global bragging rights, saying their consistency in title-winning efforts outweighed anything in Britain, France or even Europe as a whole.

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Houwing wrote for Sport24