Steve Morris : Rugby
The acid test for South Africa’s new regionalised Super 12 system does not come on Friday February 27, when the southern hemisphere’s provincial championship kicks off in Cape Town where the Western Stormers face Wellington at Newlands. Neither will it really come should one of the local composite teams make the final on May 29.
The real benchmark of whether this system will work or not comes somewhere around midway in the quest for the trophy, which is widely recognised as the toughest to win in modern world rugby.
RiaanOberholzer, chief executive of the South African Rugby Football Union, announced the four squads which will carry our multicoloured flag to Australia and New Zealand with all the gravity that one would expect. There was also the required enthusiasm for a draft which has not been widely accepted or generally understood.
The Golden Cats, a conglomeration of players from Free State, Gauteng, Griqualand West and Northern Free State, perhaps typify the problems ahead better than most of the other three sides. Coached by Peet Kleynhans from Bloemfontein, they have a strength on paper at least equal to or better than most other teams they will face.
Kleynhans has the playing personnel on his books to put together a team composed entirely of internationals — and still leave some Springboks on the bench. But that is purely on paper and, somehow, there must remain the feeling that the in-built provincial divisions and widely separated centres the players are drawn from, will prove an overwhelming headache.
It is the very taxing geographical nature of trying to tie diverse talents from Bloem, Kimberley, Johannesburg and Welkom into a cohesive unit through regular squad training which is going to be the coach’s major bugbear. One suspects that there will be sudden and unexplained rashes of niggling injuries to players in Johannesburg unwilling to spend days or even weeks in Bloemfontein … and vice versa. If this is indeed the case, the gilt will rapidly come off and the claws undoubtedly be drawn.
This would be a tragedy were it to happen, for, under Kleynhans, Free State produced some of the best South African performances — and certainly some of the best rugby — in last year’s competition.
The Coastal Sharks, coached by this country’s most successful guide through the travails of Super 12, Ian McIntosh, have something of a similar problem. For, while the side is almost certain to contain a preponderance of McIntosh’s own Natal players, the talents of Border and Eastern Province have also been inspanned.
Given that the men from Port Elizabeth and East London have been demonstratively less successful in recent years than the sides Mac has coached, there will at least be less resistance to travel. More especially so when the side will be based — to all extents and purposes — in Durban.
This special coastal cach has already seen the departure of Springboks Joe Gillingham, Chris Rossouw and Warren Brosnihan to Durban from Gauteng, although there are mitigating factors which must be raised in each case. But, at base, all three face the prospect of facing a welter of past and current internationals playing in their preferred positions in the Golden Cats squad … and the bulk of them from the Free State. All three had little option but to move to ensure themselves of regular Super 12 rugby or, indeed, any Super 12 at all.
There is also the added benefit of playing under Springbok captain Gary Teichmann and his proximity to the ear of Nick Mallett throughout a competition the straightforward national coach has made no bones about regarding as a tacit national ranking system.
The Northern Bulls and Western Stormers have less problems than the other two sides. The Cape Town-based outfit drawing its players from Wellington, George and the Mother City, a far more homogeneous spread for coach Harry Viljoen to work with than some of his counterparts.
They also look to be an explosively exciting side with a veritable sunburst of backline talent in the likes of James Small, Dick Muir, Percy Montgomery, Pieter Rossouw and Justin Swart to call on, with Chester Williams, Christian Stewart and Breyton Paulse waiting for a shot at the competition to ease any injury or form worries.
Under Viljoen, Western Province came back from abject despondency and near obscurity last season. He welded his team into a unit and gave them the chance to both express themselves on the field and enjoy doing so. It is a format that could well do much in Super 12 to break down the growing fallacy that the Auckland machine is invincible.
The Northern Bulls have many of the advantages which their Cape counterparts have in terms of the proximity of the unions, which have been welded together with journeys between Pretoria and Witbank, Brakpan and Potchefstroom comfortably possible for an afternoon or evening training session.
But it stops there. Coach Eugene van Wyk has the hardest job of all ahead of him. Only recently re-installed — amid some lingering acrimony it must be added — as coach at Loftus Versfeld, his own side is in the rebuilding stages. He has lost tighthead prop Marius Hurter to the Cape and the ill feelings among the players which bubbled to the surface during last season have not fully dissipated.
There is also the very important fact that the Loftus faithful stayed away in droves last season when their own Blue Bulls were playing. This remains the most important part of the whole equation.
Will the crowds come to watch pick-up sides? Super 12 tournament director Murray Reid remains convinced they will, citing the rising gates of last season and the New Zealand experience in their own domestic competition.
Perhaps, but it must be pointed out that firstly, the biggest rise in bums-on-seats came in Australia, where the game really took off; secondly, that the South African sides in the last Super 12 — good, bad or indifferent as they may have proved — were playing under flags of passion and not convenience; and, thirdly, that the New Zealand sides in Super 12 are merely extensions of their provincial counterparts, with a representative team based in each of the country’s five major centres.
It will surely take only a few short weeks of the competition to gauge whether the confidence Oberholzer and Reid have in the new format is justified or not. Until then, it is best to leave it to the players and reserve judgment.