The past and present Springbok captains clash when Francois Pienaar’s Transvaal take on Gary Teichmann’s Natal this weekend
RUGBY: Jon Swift
THERE is little left really for Transvaal this season but to pick up the pieces. A win against Natal at King’s Park in Durban this weekend will perhaps keep them in the running for the Currie Cup, but the side, laden with Springboks, has underchieved in a rather dramatic fashion this season.
It started with the disasters of the Super 12. Injuries, sanctions against Johan le Roux and James Dalton for on-the- field infringements and the loss of Kitch Christie as coach began it all.
The malaise within the Transvaal team continued with schisms within the playing staff and the appointment of Alex Wylie to run things during the domestic season.
Wylie, so history has proved, was not the answer. It seemed that the harder the side tried the worse it became. They have, in short, never looked close to being the side of two seasons ago that swept all before them.
The big New Zealander has now departed for Argentina to put his coaching abilities to work for the Pumas, and Ray Mordt has taken over for the second time after losing his job as as an assistant coach to the national team as the musical chairs continue.
For Transvaal, though, the good news is that Francois Pienaar is back in harness after injury forced him to sit out the series against the All Blacks. You get the feeling that too much was asked of Pienaar for too long by his Transvaal side. He delivered until his body — an entity Pienaar uses as much as a weapon as he does as a means of perambulation — finally cried halt to the incessant battering.
It was as if the side had lost a heart as well as a skipper.
It is one of those open secrets that Pienaar faces an uphill battle to regain his rightful position as Springbok captain. The first leg of that journey begins in Durban this Saturday.
Against him, his teammates and any vague chance of regaining former glory and taking the trophy home to Ellis Park at the end of the season is ranged perhaps the best combination in South African rugby.
And a side led by the man who took over the mantle of captaincy from him, Gary Teichmann. Natal have shown all that is good in the game this season, grinding it out in the set phases and lending a lift and lilt to the business of backline play that has joyously restated the oft forgotten basis of rugby that this is indeed a pastime played with the ball in the hand.
It is an ingriguing prospect that if indeed Pienaar is on the Springbok nasty list and this signals the start of his own attempt at renaissance in the red and white battle colours of Transvaal, it is equally true of James Small in the black and white jersey of Natal.
Intriguing because both players have little left to prove in terms of ability on the field. Small by his individualistic attitude has made his own problems off the field and paid a harsh penalty.
Pienaar, the leader of the players’ revolt which led to the onset of what has been a chaotic and ill-managed start to the professional era, is of a different, less streetsmart demeanour. Yet, beneath the walkman Small wears like a talisman, and the silk of Pienaar’s tested diplomacy, lies a steely determination in both.
It is perhaps on this attribute that the match will pivot. Pienaar will be once again laying it all on the line to keep his men in contention. Small, equally, will be fighting to prove his critics in the realm of officialdom wrong by placing his heart foursquare in the centre of the pitch as he does each representative game he plays.
It is one of those patches of sporting drama which offers much. As a side plot there is the looming figure of Teichmann, an inspirational, lead-from-the-front man who is as unlikely a human to willingly concede top billing as any.
Under the guidance of Ian Macintosh — unquestionably the best thinker of the game in this country now that Christie has taken a back seat — Teichmann has taken his game a step beyond what would have normally been believed to be credible or possible just two seasons ago and urged on a Natal side with both guts and gusto.
Teichmann will not willingly concede either the points on offer this weekend or his nascent Springbok captaincy without fighting for it. His recent history on the long road to an international career alone proves that the rangy eighthman is no quitter. The same is true of the coach, harshly treated by the national side in many respects, MacIntosh has fought back under the Natal banner.
MacIntosh deserves far more credit than he has got for what he has done for both rugby in general and Natal in particular. He has managed to graft the sheer delight of running with the ball in the hand to the business end of it and in the process moulded a side of real quality.
Given the freedom MacIntosh has given his players, they will continue to make mistakes. But the blemishes have — this season at least — all come from the licence for creativity, the quest to do something different and new.
It could be argued that this is one of the few areas in this country’s game where things are moving and the inherent conservatism of South Africans has not held sway. MacIntosh is, in short, doing what the New Zealand coach John Hart has managed so successfully, opening the game to new ideas and new avenues of attack.
Transvaal on the other hand have been scrabbling to apply the old formula of subdue and penetrate with little success. Against South Eastern Transvaal, a side with little to lose and everything to gain, the formula showed the holes that must perforce come from an undershirt worn too long and washed too often.
It is this garb they will have to wear at King’s Park in an attempt to resuscitate a season that will not rate as one they will remember with any real pride.
Whether they can shake the perception of raggedness off and lift their heads again is the task that faces Pienaar and his bedraggled Golden Lions. Against them are an unbeaten team who have already scored an average of over 50 points in the 10 unbeaten games they have played this season, are a point clear at the top of Section A … and have a game in hand.
If Transvaal do, as everything would suggest, come out of the weekend as losers, then the season will surely be convincingly rather than figuratively over.