Andy Capostagno : Rugby
There will be those based in the north of the country who are experiencing a severe sense of dj vu about the Super 12 performance of the Gauteng Cats. You may recall that the Cats won their first match last year (39-32 vs Northern Bulls), then lost nine in a row to finish bottom of the log. This year they opened with a win against the ACT Brumbies and have now lost twice, once to the New South Wales Waratahs in Bloemfontein and once to the Natal Sharks at Ellis Park.
After the latest reverse, Cats captain Rassie Erasmus was upbeat – but that was hardly surprising. I told him once that his exuberant method of dealing with the press was hardly in the great tradition of the taciturn captains of South African history. He replied: “Well, I’d like to be strong and silent, but it’s not in my nature.”
Erasmus’s locquacity may be unfamiliar, but his method of captaincy – leading by example – has generations of forebears. However, the rigours of the Super 12 require more than fearless dives into flying boots. There was a moment in the final quarter of the Sharks game where the match seemed to turn and Erasmus acknowledged it.
He said: “When we were 20-23 down and they were down to 14 men, I opted to run a penalty from in front of their posts. With hindsight I should have kicked the three points to level the scores, or maybe called a scrum, bearing in mind that we were eight against seven up front.”
Instead the Cats opted for a hit-and- hope tap penalty and within 10 minutes they were 29-20 down and chasing the game which had almost been handed back to them by Lourens Venter’s intercept try. The point to be made here is that not everyone is able to play at optimum level and, upon the shriek of a whistle, step outside the hurly-burly to make any decision at all, let alone the right one.
Erasmus’s frank self-appraisal suggests that he is aware of his shortcomings in the captaincy department, and the destiny of the Cats may depend on how quickly he learns his lessons. But with the arrival in South Africa of the Otago Highlanders things are going to get harder rather than easier.
This year the Highlanders have gone from talented, but unpredictable, to the real McCoy. The proof of that assessment came when Stormers coach Alan Solomons tacitly admitted he could not beat them in Dunedin and selected his second team instead. In the absence, or even the discussion of, some form of official censure from the Sanzar committee, Solomons’s come-uppance may arrive this week in Canberra.
The theory that the Highlanders were impregnable may be supportable, but the theory that the ACT Brumbies are a pushover at home owes much to woolly thinking. For until the Sharks beat the Brumbies last year, Bruce Stadium had for two years been an impregnable fortress for the pick-up side. So much so that the week before losing 41-23 to the Sharks, the Brumbies had beaten the Highlanders 34-26. And when the season was in tatters for them, they still found the spirit to beat Queensland 23-16, thus denying the Reds a semi-final berth.
Last week the Brumbies should have beaten the Reds again, this time at Ballymore, and this week the Stormers could be the punchbag on which they take out their frustration. Let us not forget that while the Brumbies may have lost the halo of two seasons ago, they still possess the Wallaby halfback partnership of George Gregan and Stephen Larkham.
They also have a pack capable of providing quality ball for the cerebral pair to utilise, and on that basis must be considered closer to predators disputing a carcass than babies clutching candy bars. In other words, the 11 changes made in the Stormers team will be largely irrelevant if ACT play anywhere near their potential.
Fortunately for the Stormers they have a couple of players capable of grabbing a match by the scruff of the neck, including the inevitable Saint Bobby, but now also featuring the startling skills at outside centre of Robbie Fleck, who is rapidly convincing us that there is life after Andr Snyman. Players of such calibre mean that the Stormers can beat the Brumbies, but whether they will subsequently be in any fit state to take on the Waratahs next weekend remains to be seen.