URC year one 'a dream come true'

United Rugby Championship (URC) chief executive Martin Anayi believes that the first year of the competition is a "dream come true" and that the tournament will go from strength to strength.

Speaking on the eve of the final, Anayi says that all objectives set out for the first year of URC have been met, despite the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Stormers and the Bulls face off at 19:30 on Saturday to see who will be crowned the inaugural champions.

"It's a dream come true," Anayi says of the way the URC has worked towards a dream final in Cape Town.

It didn't always seem that way, especially when the Omicron variant of Covid-19 hit South Africa in December last year, with some international teams stranded in the country at the time.

At that point, it felt as if a cross-hemisphere competition would be challenging to maintain, let alone grow.

"While the year started off and we had a really good run of games, it was always a Covid-19 year, and we knew it wasn't the future structure of the tournament. We never knew Omicron was going to hit when teams were out in SA, and obviously, that was a really traumatic experience for everyone involved," Anayi said.

"To come back from that, to bounce back and be even stronger than we were before - to break all records - be that media, broadcast, viewership, or even how we track the brand and how the perception of the competition has improved because of the quality - from a deep low in December shows resilience in the competition."

Anayi says that on the eve of the final in Cape Town, it shows just how strong the competition's foundations are and that it will only grow in strength as time goes on.

"It shows that the fundamentals are really strong in the URC. To have a final in Cape