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'URC is the only proper competition where we can be involved'

Black Lion skipper Merab Sharikadze leads out his team at Llanelli last September (Photo by Levan Verdzeuli/Getty Images)

Levan Maisashvili has explained why Georgian franchise Black Lion are looking for entry to play in the United Rugby Championship (URC). The former national team boss, who stepped down after Rugby World Cup 2023 to become his union’s high-performance boss, claimed that the Tbilisi-based club is logistically ready to make the step up.

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Founded in 2021 to participate in the Rugby Europe Super Cup and give the home-based internationals a more competitive fixtures schedule, they have also participated in the Currie Cup First Division in South Africa and have toured South America.

EPCR invited them to play in the 2023/24 Challenge Cup where they only narrowly lost to eventual finalists Gloucester (10-15) and beat  UCC club Scarlets 23-7 in Wales. They also played two Top 14 teams, losing 6-28 at Castres and 3-36 at home to Clermont.

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They have now been drawn against Vannes (h), Scarlets (a), Bayonne (h) and Edinburgh (a) in the 2024/25 tournament, but Maisashvili has told rugby officials he believes the URC is the competition best suited to accommodate the long term progress of Black Lion and consolidate the progress of in recent years of Georgia at Test level.   

Before flying to Japan and on to Australia for the Lelos’ Test matches under Richard Cockerill, Maisashvili was in South Africa for the pool stage of the World Rugby U20 Championship and he sat down for a feature-length interview with RugbyPass which will be published this Sunday.  

It was his first trip back to South Africa since his near-death experience in 2021 where he spent a month in a coma in a Johannesburg hospital and was given a two per cent survival chance. Delighted to finally make his return to the country three years later, Maisashvili spoke about the need for the Georgian Test team and the Black Lion franchise to secure more games.

“We are humble people, Georgians, we are not arrogant,” he began. “But the reality is 2022, during the nine months we managed to beat Italy and beat the Welsh at Principality Stadium. Not a lot of teams had a victory at the Principality, not a lot of coaches get to be a winner at the Principality.

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“It’s a great feeling and that is what we need, we need opportunity. We need the opportunity to have a little bit more big games. That is why we created Black Lion. Our main target now is we need a more consistent schedule for Black Lion. Of course, we have the opportunity to participate in the Challenge Cup but it’s not enough.

“It is four games, a maximum of eight if you play the final. It’s not enough, we need a more consistent championship. The Super Cup is not enough, it’s six, seven games. It’s not a competitive championship for us. We need to be more consistent and our target is more game time, more big games.

“I would be happy if 60 per cent of our national team players are based in Black Lion but Black Lion needed more competitive games. Our main target is to play in the URC. We need to play in the URC. Last year when we had the opportunity to play against the big teams, we gave Gloucester a very close game – we took the one bonus point – and we beat the Llanelli Scarlets.

“We are a competitive team and if we had the opportunity to play at URC we will have a much stronger team and I promise we will be more competitive than a couple of the teams that are always on the bottom of the tournament.

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“We are searching for where we can participate… If you want something consistent, URC is the only proper competition where we can be involved as a team. In France they have a different rule, we cannot be involved in Pro D2.

“But we can manage, we can find the budget (for URC), how to travel, it’s fully investable for us what we need from a logistical side. We are ready to solve all the issues. We just need some permission.”

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Comments

3 Comments
H
Henrik 122 days ago

2 teams from Wales should be enough, so the Blk Lions and a combined team from Spain/Portugal could be added

R
Red and White Dynamight 123 days ago

URC is such poor quality, why not just weaken it even more. Only Leinster and Munster have teams full of Test players. SA teams nowhere near their quality of early Super before they allowed overseas selection and most of the Boks ran for the Euro/STG.

S
Sinenhlanhla 124 days ago

Cheetahs, Pumas, Griquas,EP elephants, four teams from Georgia, Romania, two from Portugal, Spain, Jaguars and Pampas from Argentina based in Spain and call it the URC Shield

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J
JW 3 hours ago
'Passionate reunion of France and New Zealand shows Fabien Galthie is wrong to rest his stars'

Ok, managed to read the full article..

... New Zealand’s has only 14 and the professional season is all over within four months. In France, club governance is the responsibility of an independent organisation [the Ligue Nationale de Rugby or LNR] which is entirely separate from the host union [the Fédération Française de Rugby or FFR]. Down south New Zealand Rugby runs the provincial and the national game.

That is the National Provincial Championship, a competition of 14 representative union based teams run through the SH international window and only semi professional (paid only during it's running). It is run by NZR and goes for two and a half months.


Super Rugby is a competition involving 12 fully professional teams, of which 5 are of New Zealand eligibility, and another joint administered team of Pacific Island eligibility, with NZR involvement. It was a 18 week competition this year, so involved (randomly chosen I believe) extra return fixtures (2 or 3 home and away derbys), and is run by Super Rugby Pacific's own independent Board (or organisation). The teams may or may not be independently run and owned (note, this does not necessarily mean what you think of as 'privately owned').


LNR was setup by FFR and the French Government to administer the professional game in France. In New Zealand, the Players Association and Super Rugby franchises agreed last month to not setup their own governance structure for professional rugby and re-aligned themselves with New Zealand Rugby. They had been proposing to do something like the English model, I'm not sure how closely that would have been aligned to the French system but it did not sound like it would have French union executive representation on it like the LNR does.

In the shaky isles the professional pyramid tapers to a point with the almighty All Blacks. In France the feeling for country is no more important than the sense of fierce local identity spawned at myriad clubs concentrated in the southwest. Progress is achieved by a nonchalant shrug and the wide sweep of nuanced negotiation, rather than driven from the top by a single intense focus.

Yes, it is pretty much a 'representative' selection system at every level, but these union's are having to fight for their existence against the regime that is NZR, and are currently going through their own battle, just as France has recently as I understand it. A single focus, ala the French game, might not be the best outcome for rugby as a whole.


For pure theatre, it is a wonderful article so far. I prefer 'Ntamack New Zealand 2022' though.

The young Crusader still struggles to solve the puzzle posed by the shorter, more compact tight-heads at this level but he had no problem at all with Colombe.

It was interesting to listen to Manny during an interview on Maul or Nothing, he citied that after a bit of banter with the All Black's he no longer wanted one of their jersey's after the game. One of those talks was an eye to eye chat with Tamaiti Williams, there appear to be nothing between the lock and prop, just a lot of give and take. I thought TW angled in and caused Taylor to pop a few times, and that NZ were lucky to be rewarded.

f you have a forward of 6ft 8ins and 145kg, and he is not at all disturbed by a dysfunctional set-piece, you are in business.

He talked about the clarity of the leadership that helped alleviate any need for anxiety at the predicaments unfolding before him. The same cannot be said for New Zealand when they had 5 minutes left to retrieve a match winning penalty, I don't believe. Did the team in black have much of a plan at any point in the game? I don't really call an autonomous 10 vehicle they had as innovative. I think Razor needs to go back to the dealer and get a new game driver on that one.

Vaa’i is no match for his power on the ground. Even in reverse, Meafou is like a tractor motoring backwards in low gear, trampling all in its path.

Vaa'i actually stops him in his tracks. He gets what could have been a dubious 'tackle' on him?

A high-level offence will often try to identify and exploit big forwards who can be slower to reload, and therefore vulnerable to two quick plays run at them consecutively.

Yes he was just standing on his haunches wasn't he? He mentioned that in the interview, saying that not only did you just get up and back into the line to find the opposition was already set and running at you they also hit harder than anything he'd experienced in the Top 14. He was referring to New Zealands ultra-physical, burst-based Super style of course, which he was more than a bit surprised about. I don't blame him for being caught out.


He still sent the obstruction back to the repair yard though!

What wouldn’t the New Zealand rugby public give to see the likes of Mauvaka and Meafou up front..

Common now Nick, don't go there! Meafou showed his Toulouse shirt and promptly got his citizenship, New Zealand can't have him, surely?!?


As I have said before with these subjects, really enjoy your enthusiasm for their contribution on the field and I'd love to see more of their shapes running out for Vern Cotter and the like styled teams.

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