Andy Capostagno Rugby
To say it has been a strange Currie Cup this year would be like saying Daffy Duck is mildly obtuse. Put yourself in the position of coach of one of the major provinces. You don’t know from week to week which of your best players will be available due to the vagaries of the Springbok set-up.
You don’t know when the phone call is going to come asserting once and for all that one third of the team must come from previously disadvantaged communities. You don’t know when Spinnekop van der Merwe will recover from his groin strain, and yet the sponsors and the fans demand success.
Success in sport tends to come from continuity. But the only team in the Currie Cup semi-finals which has had a settled side is the South Western Districts Eagles. And even the fortunate men who play in the shadow of the Outeniqua mountains have had to do without their coach for most of the season.
There are those who will assert that the semi-finalists were predictable. The Lions won the Vodacom Cup under Laurie Mains and had therefore to be among the favourites for the Currie Cup. Except that Griquas won the Vodacom Cup last year and this year they didn’t make the Currie Cup semi- finals.
Free State have been there or thereabouts for the last five years, losing two finals along the way; they were bound to be contenders. But at the end of last season they lost five players to the Lions and looked like having to do without the men who had gone to England to earn a living. So confident were the bookies in Free State that they began the season as 25-1 outsiders.
Natal have been the team of the 1990s, stacked with Springboks, almost invincible at King’s Park. Yet the calls upon Ian McIntosh’s resources from national Under 21 and Springbok level, together with a crippling injury list, meant that Andr Joubert was forced to play fly-half, not through some coaching masterstroke but because there was no one else!
And, for those who need reminding, four years ago the Eagles lost three games in a row by 100 points or more. This season they put 100 points on a team (Northern Free State) for the first time in their history.
If anyone thought that was predictable at the start of the season I hope they put a considerable sum of money down. All of this and we haven’t even got around to discussing the fact that the Blue Bulls and Western Province, last year’s finalists, are nowhere to be seen this weekend.
It goes without saying that the best thing that could happen to the Currie Cup would be an Eagles win against the Lions at Ellis Park on Saturday. And it goes without saying that it is not going to happen.
Last week’s 27-0 hiding in George exposed the Eagles for the limited team they are, and while we should applaud the fact that for two years running a so-called minor province has reached the last four, it will be some time before one of them emulates Natal and crosses over from annoying interloper to consistent achiever.
If Hennie le Roux is fully fit expect him to put on the kind of display at fly-half that Gaffie du Toit gave against Western Province in Kimberley last Saturday.
The pressure is now off the World Cup fringe players who didn’t make it and it would hardly be surprising to see a few dominate the final, Springbok-less, fortnight of the season.
Free State have become used to being without their best players and their utilisation of an outstanding crop of youngsters should be an object lesson to the other desperately conservative major provinces.
Two seasons ago when Brendan Venter signed to play for London Irish a prominent member of the Free State hierarchy asked a sponsor for money to buy a replacement. To the credit of the sponsor’s representative he replied, “What’s wrong with Chris Kruger?”, and this season the younger brother of Jorrie has come into his own.
The Free State pack is likely to dominate their Natal counterparts at King’s Park and therein could lie the outcome. In the absence of Henry Honiball, the Sharks’ game plan is likely to move away from McIntosh’s beloved “hit it up” model. Instead, with Joubert moving into the fly-half berth they are likely to kick for position and hope to frustrate the Free Staters territorially.
Defeat, of course, would mean the end for both Joubert and McIntosh, and if history tells us anything it is that you underestimate a Natal side with its back to the wall at your peril. If there is any way to predict a competition which has had more sub-plots than a Quentin Tarantino movie, then for what it’s worth, I think it will be a Lions/Sharks final at Ellis Park.