Andy Capostagno Rugby
The Y2K-compliant Super 12 was launched this week. For the new millennium the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) has found a new sponsor (Vodacom), the Cats and the Bulls have apparently exchanged shirts, a New Zealander will be coaching a South African franchise for the first time and a new set of rules will make its southern hemisphere debut when the competition begins on February 26.
But other things remain cosily familiar. The touring schedule for South African teams is monstrously unfair, the New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU) can’t make up its mind about “telly refs”, the new laws are bewilderingly obtuse and no one really believes that a local side will make the final.
Take the laws/rules; use it or lose it has been introduced to the scrum. Suddenly it becomes possible for the smaller pack to wheel the bigger one and get the put-in at the re-set. Hugh Reece- Edwards, coach of the Sharks, said this will force old-fashioned tight forwards out of the game and increase the trend towards smaller, more athletic players who can contribute in the loose.
Heyneke Meyer, the coach of the Bulls, said on the contrary, it would put the onus on teams to make sure they were never pushed off their own ball in an attacking situation. Meyer, who at 32 is younger than several of his players, is obviously thinking along the same lines as French coach Bernard Laporte, who picked two locks to play in the back row last week and was rewarded with a 36-3 demolition of Wales in the Six Nations.
Laurie Mains, coach of the Cats, said the real positive of the new mandate is the altered offside law which forces players to contest the ball from their own side of the field. He said it would make players like Corn Krige, Wayne Fyvie and Ruben Kruger redundant and allow the Super 12 to return to the kind of open rugby seen when the tournament first grew out of the Super 10, five years ago.
Mains was being slightly tongue in cheek, after all Krige, Fyvie and Kruger just happen to be the captains of the Stormers, Sharks and Bulls. But interestingly, Reece-Edwards claimed that the new offside law was largely the same as the old one in the way in which it was interpreted by South African referees last season. Which may or may not give local teams a small advantage and proves once again that offside, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
Reece-Edwards has the toughest task of all. He has replaced a legend in Ian McIntosh and takes charge of a Sharks team which dominated South African rugby in the 1990s, but starts 2000 with question marks all over the place. It is impossible to replace Andre Joubert and Henry Honiball, while the Golden Lions have ensured that replacing Gary Teichmann will not be as easy as getting AJ Venter to sign on the dotted line.
In addition the Sharks have the toughest schedule of all, beginning with a three week antipodean tour against the Hurricanes, Highlanders, Brumbies and Warratahs. They then have a week off before playing the Bulls at Loftus on April Fools Day. Sharks supporters will have to wait until the seventh round of competition before seeing their team play in Durban, by which time any hopes of a semi-final berth could have already been extinguished.
By contrast the Bulls play in South Africa for the first six weeks and after four weeks of hell against the Reds, Chiefs, Blues and Crusaders, they finish with home games against the Hurricanes and Highlanders. With the huge close- season influx of playing staff from Free State, the Bulls will surely improve upon the penultimate and last place log finishes of the past two seasons.
The Stormers have much to atone for after the “Men in Black” campaign of last year which ended as “Men in Blackmail” when the team threatened not to play the semi-final against the Highlanders if more money was not found. They have a back row crisis with Bobby Skinstad and Robbie Brink out for the duration and Krige not yet fully recovered from another crippling injury.
As for the Cats, they have gone from being the best team on paper for the past two years to one of the worst. If Hennie le Roux can summon the form of last year’s Currie Cup they have a chance to compete, but if Anno Domini takes its toll on the great man the floor is the limit. Fortunately they have most of the squad which carried all before them in domestic rugby last year, together with the most battle hardened of all coaches. It will be a delicious irony if, having lost when they should have won in the Super 12, the Cats now win when they should lose.
ENDS