A flurry of injuries, a James Small row, a huge fixture list and the singing Blue Bulls – it’s the start of a long, gruelling rugby season
RUGBY:Jon Swift
THERE is the distinct feeling that the rugby season has come upon us all too quickly. More so when a quick glance at the calendar shows that in just two weeks’ time, the first Super 12 series matches begin a season that promises to be a long and grinding affair.
The first of the tri-nation provincial championship games is the meeting between Northern Transvaal and reigning champions Auckland at Loftus Versfeld on March 1, Free State take on Transvaal at the Free State Stadium the following day, and Natal start their campaign against Otago at home a week later.
Just to complicate affairs, there is the not inconsequential matter of having to select a South African squad for the World Cup Sevens in Hong Kong after the Winfield Sevens next weekend, and the spate of injuries that thorough pre-season checks have revealed in nine of the members of the current national squad.
Kobus Wiese has still to exercise his rights as the new Transvaal captain, James Dalton will be out for at least six weeks following surgery to his shoulder, and Andre Joubert faces a similar lay-off for his damaged knee to recover.
Any number of issues can be raised from this. First there is the undoubted fact that key players like Wiese, Dalton and Joubert have been playing with injuries. Even if they are professionals, this should not be acceptable, either to the selectors or the players themselves.
On a team level it means that they cannot have been performing at peak, and on an individual basis, that they have been risking drastically shortening their careers.
In Wiese’s case, it would tend to work against the big man in the South African second row making it through to the next World Cup at Cardiff in 1999. Wiese made all the difference when he ws drafted back into the green and gold by his sheer physical presence and his huge capacity for the business end of the game.
Until Johan Ackermann is fully recovered from the knee injury which ruled him out of the bulk of last season’s internationals, or the younger lock forwards reach that extra level and can fit into the game as seasoned internationals, Wiese’s continued role is crucial.
So is that of Joubert at fullback. Especially as he has already indicated that he will retire before the next World Cup, and the saga of where and when James Small will play and just who that will be for continues.
Chester Williams is back on the wing this season and will be making his claims for a recall to national colours strongly heard. It would have been the ideal chance to move Small back into Joubert’s position – a shift that was done with signal success during Joubert’s absence through injury in the last Sanzar Series against Australia and New Zealand. But then Small went nightclubbing, incurred the wrath of coach Andre Markgraaff and the whole idea was discarded.
Equally, Dalton has emerged as a key player and, as one of the youngest members of the current squad, a player who will be central to the thinking and planning of international campaigns for a number of years.
The hooker with the blocky four-square build of a brick outhouse has his detractors; most notably for his fiery temperament and often erratic throw-ins at the lineout. But no one can deny his mobility about the park or the massive upper body strength which makes him one of the few South African forwards capable of ripping the ball away from the opposition at Test level.
It all adds up to the fact that the season is just too long, too demanding and far too physical.
This year, our top players will have Super 12, the Sanzar tri-nations games, a gruelling tour by the British Lions and the Currie Cup, as well as a schedule of further Tests that have still to be finalised.
Last year’s gruelling tour of Argentina, France and Wales gave Markgraaff the opportunity to start building a squad with the depth to sustain the physical demands of a season that stretches virtually from one Christmas dinner to the next.
This season will show whether the first building blocks of that squad really fit.