We may just have witnessed the baton being passed. Last Saturday at Loftus Versfeld the team that dominated the lineouts and scrums kicked well, both tactically and for points, and showing infinite patience as the minutes ticked by, won the game. For a decade the team that did all those things better than anyone else was the Bulls. On Saturday it was the Stormers.
After spending a season treading water, Francois Louw put on the kind of display on the flank that got him noticed in the first place. At flyhalf, Peter Grant showed again that a season in Japan has not dulled his edge one iota. On this evidence it is he, and not Morne Steyn, who will be fighting it out with the precocious 20-year-olds to wear the number 10 jersey for the Springboks at the World Cup.
In the final quarter Juan de Jongh and Gio Aplon also put markers down for a place in the national side. De Jongh carried the ball magnificently, while Aplon soared high to pluck possession from the air. But the overarching achievement of the game was by the Stormers’ tight five, particularly the lock partnership of Andries Bekker and Rynhardt Elstadt.
It has been many years since a Cape side of any name bossed the Bulls’ pack at Loftus. You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that Victor Matfield and Bakkies Botha have been subdued at the same venue. Both things came to pass last Saturday.
Once again it is a double-edged sword for the national selectors to grapple with. This time last year they chose to contract a group of great players until after the World Cup. They gambled on those players staying fit and maintaining form, but what they almost certainly ignored was the possibility that someone better might come along in the interim.
It is early in the season still, but the Bulls have lost two in a row and after this week’s derby against the Lions, they embark on a four-week tour to the Antipodes that looks a good deal less straightforward than it did a month ago. They play the Hurricanes, Crusaders, Reds and Force and on current form it is hard to believe they can run riot there in the manner of recent campaigns.
For the Stormers, however, the sky’s the limit. They play the Force at Newlands this week and will expect to be much too good for the Perth-based unit. The Force beat the Lions in Johannesburg last week and it is normal policy for Australian teams to target just one of their two matches in South Africa. The Force are unlikely to be title contenders, so they may feel that their job is done.
As for the two South African sides currently campaigning overseas, they enjoyed markedly contrasting weekends. The Sharks lost their unbeaten record in Hamilton against the Chiefs, while the Cheetahs won their first game ever in Australia.
You have to go back to 1997 for the last time the Cheetahs won any game away from South Africa. They beat the Highlanders 49-18 in Invercargill, with a side that included such Springbok icons as Os du Randt, Andre Venter and Rassie Erasmus. The following year Free State were forced into a marriage of convenience with the Lions, forming the Cats, and only got their independence back in 2006.
So you have to wonder what the mood was like in the Waratahs’ dressing room as they trooped off at the end of a 23-3 drubbing by the traditional whipping boys. If the Cheetahs achieve nothing else this year they have done enough to justify their inclusion in future competitions.
The Sharks were predictably off the pace against the Chiefs in week three of a tour that had seen them collect 10 log points in two games against Australian opposition. For the first time this season they failed to boss the breakdowns and a slew of handling errors, exacerbated by damp conditions, put paid to their chances.
Nevertheless they should be marginal favourites to beat the Crusaders in London on Sunday. The squad flew back to Durban hours after the defeat by the Chiefs and set off for London only on Thursday night. By contrast the Crusaders had to travel with a split squad due to limited seat availability.
Jacques Louis Potgieter will step into the flyhalf breach caused by Pat Lambie’s broken finger. Ordinarily that might be seen as weakening the side, but Potgieter’s game is ideally suited to a soft spring day in London and the Sharks may actually be praying for rain as they have the edge in depth on the Crusaders up front.
Whatever happens on the field, the match is already a success, with tickets selling like hot cakes and marketing people twisting their pony tails in anticipation of what this radical departure means for the future. If in 10 years’ time rugby is playing a champions league featuring the best sides from both hemispheres we can say that it began at Twickenham on March 27 2011.