RUGBY: Jon Swift
THROUGHOUT the tragically under-promoted Student Rugby World Cup which came and went with barely a ripple over the past month, there was the feeling that this was a shop window of one of South African sport’s biggest failings … the big things we do well, in the lesser concerns we do dismally.
Run at two venues — RAU in Johannesburg and LC de Villiers and Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria — it was, from a local point of view, saved by the fact that an out-gunned South African side made the final.
There was no real disgrace in the fact that our students went down 38-20 to a massively powerful and international-laden French combination who had arrived with only one thought in mind; to defend the title they won by beating New Zealand in Italy four years ago.
It showed up some emerging South African talent of immense future value to the game in this country, players like fullback Kobus Englebrecht, backline players Ricardo Laubscher and Donovan van Wyk, and young locks Peet Arnold and Piet van Westing.
Arnold and Van Westing did well enough against Tricolor Test lock Oliver Brouzet and his partner Thierry Cleda to suggest that more will be seen of them in future. So did Laubscher and Van Wyk, both taking the ball at pace and looking for something to happen in attacking a French backline filled with top division players.
But above all, there was the way Englebrecht played. His positional play was instinctively correct, his tackling deadly and his running exceptional. Englebrecht it was who made a superb break up the touchline to set up the only South African try by Barney Vorster, shaking off three French tackles in the process. We shall hear a lot more about young Kobus.
But, that said, the less we hear about the shoddy way this tournament — and with World Cup status, surely it is a significant event for South African rugby — was handled the better.
In the light of the way the senior tournament for the William Web Ellis Trophy went a little over a year ago, the local tournament organisers deserve censure from the South African Rugby Board.