Andy Capostagno Rugby
Three rounds to go and the Super 12 semi- finalists remain as elusive as a Waisale Serevi side-step. There are those who will argue that the Highlanders and the Stormers are certainties for the last four, but that’s all it is; an argument.
The remaining fixtures for all the contenders are full of potential snake pits and prat falls.
The Stormers have had a week off. New captain Corn Krige was one of several who took to the hills in 4x4s and that is probably the best solution possible to taking over the reins from Bobby Skinstad. He who would turn opposition blood to ice had better learn to chill out.
Krige will have much on his mind. He has rebuilt his reputation for destructive tackling as successfully as the surgeons rebuilt the shattered middle finger of his right hand. Now, in the absence of Skinstad, he will need to get back to his feet a fraction of a second sooner and increase his creative input.
If Anton Leonard is the playing replacement for Skinstad at eighth man, Krige will need to instil confidence into his deputy. The reason being that the last time Leonard started a game was the disastrous fixture at the House of Pain in Dunedin when Alan Solomons threw his second team to the Highlanders, who gratefully ate it up and spat out the bones.
This week’s opponents are another New Zealand combination, the redoubtable Auckland Blues, not the team they were after defeat by the Sharks last week, but still unbeaten by a Cape-based team either in the Super 12 or in its predecessor, the Super 10.
Information coming with the Blues that we are supposed to believe suggests that Carlos Spencer has been reduced from the best attacking fly half in the world to a gibbering wreck, likely to take the field in horn-rimmed glasses and a tweed sports jacket, spouting lines such as, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve it through not dying.”
Spencer may be going through a period of reassessment, but he is not Woody Allen with a Kiwi accent. Lest it be forgotten, the Blues can still qualify for the semi- finals and the sub-text is that a few places in the All Black World Cup squad rest on how they finish the Super 12.
It is likely to be a meeting of opposites. The Blues have conceded just seven tries in eight games. Pieter Rossouw has scored six on his own. More than ever, the Stormers could find themselves reliant on the points gathering boot of Braam van Straaten to make the game safe.
While the Stormers will be fresh after a weekend off, spare a thought for the bloodied, but unbowed Sharks. People in New Zealand must think that Pieter Muller could go one better than King Canute and hold not just the All Blacks and Blues at bay, but the sea itself.
At Eden Park on Saturday, Muller and his Shark colleagues put on a defensive display second only to that achieved by the Springboks in Wellington last July. It was not pretty, but, my, it was effective. Pity now the sore and callused hands of Steve Felsher, the Sharks’s physiotherapist who, without question will have been the busiest man in the squad this week.
Coach Ian McIntosh must weigh up his options with clinical exactitude. Does he send out his crack troops against the Chiefs in Hamilton, sore and enervated as they must be, knowing that victory is imperative? Or does he send out new bodies for old, in the hope that the Chiefs will not spoil another party, having in successive weeks seen off the Cats, the Hurricanes and the Brumbies?
One thing is certain, Mac cannot call for whatever team he eventually selects to put their bodies on the line in the same manner as they did against the Blues. There are only so many performances of that nature in any player, or group of players.
Instead he must give consideration to throwing caution to the wind. If the Sharks are to lose, it should be while waving their colours boldly. There was a time when Mac’s teams routinely scored bucketfuls of tries. They no longer have the three musketeers – Andr Joubert, James Small and Cabous van der Westhuizen – in concert to unzip defences, but they must regain the confidence going forward which that trio gave them.
If they can do that and win in the process, the last two games against the Crusaders and the Reds can be won as well. Do that and there should be two South African teams in the semi-finals. Wouldn’t that be something in World Cup year?
ENDS
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