Andy Capostagno rugby If there’s one thing that sportspeople hate it’s the playing of pointless matches. Which should help to explain the simmering discontent about the “new” Currie Cup system. Last week the Lions, the defending champions, put 96 points on the Northern Free State Griffons, a performance that earned them precisely nothing. The Griffons have not qualified for the next stage of the competition so all the deeds of that game fall away, as though it were nothing but a desert mirage. In fact, for all eight of the teams who
have made it through to the next stage, it will seem a little like an out-take from Total Recall. For Arnold Schwarzenegger wondering about his love life, read a menagerie of Lions, Cheetahs, Pumas and Cavaliers wondering how they got this far by winning only one game. As for Griquas, according to the revised log they have apparently remained in contention for the Currie Cup by losing all their matches and having a points differential of minus 46. The South African Rugby Football Union
(Sarfu) has sent out a plethora of e-mails over the past fortnight in an attempt to explain everything, but it’s all doomed to failure for, if there is one group of people more resistant to change than players, it’s the media. Rather than peer into crystal balls and predict who might benefit from the new system we would all rather wait and see what happens. The next four weeks will be devoted to 16 quarterfinals, a confusing prospect when you consider that there are normally only four of them. Sarfu’s clarification is that these are not quarterfinals at all, but matches making up the Super Eight section of the Currie Cup. It is based, we are told, on the 1999 cricket World Cup, where the preliminary round was succeeded by a Super Six stage. There were anomalies in the preliminary round of that tournament, however. Against the West Indies, Australia chased their victory target as slowly as possible in an attempt to allow their opponents to qualify for the Super Six ahead of New Zealand. The idea was to manipulate the net run rate and thus carry two points through to the next round. The idea failed, but Australia won the tournament anyway, beating South Africa in a tied semifinal by dint of having beaten them in the preliminary round.
The point is that no one really understood the consequences of the preliminary round until the Super Six had run its course, and the same will surely apply with the Currie Cup.
We can be fairly certain that Griquas’ heroic leap into the Super Eight with a 56- 36 win over the Leopards will avail them nothing. They have only two log points and would probably have to beat Natal, Free State, the Lions and Boland in successive weeks to have a chance of making the semifinals.
By contrast Western Province, the only team to take three wins and 14 points through to the Super Eight, probably only need to win their two home games to ensure themselves a home semifinal. The downside for WP is that, having topped their group in convincing fashion, their reward this week is a trip to Ellis Park to play the resurgent Lions. If anyone deserved a relatively easy home game in the first week of the Super Eight it should have been Province, and that’s an anomaly that Sarfu will have to address in subsequent seasons. However, there are those who would argue that Province’s three wins against Griquas, the Pumas and the Eagles reveal more about the relative strength of Section X and Section Y than it does about who’s playing the best rugby at the moment. Once again it is going to be a case of suck it and see. The Lions have overcome a slow start to look like title contenders again, while the all-Springbok Province backline ran riot against the Pumas in Witbank on Sunday. It is not impossible that Saturday’s clash at Ellis Park could be a dress rehearsal for the final. The two teams most likely to dispute that idea are Natal and Free State. Both have potentially tricky home games to begin with, Natal against the Eagles on Friday night, Free State against Griquas on Saturday. The latter fixture is as unpredictable a local derby as there is to be found, but home ground advantage should win the day. The same should be true at Absa Stadium, but a bonus point or two for the Eagles might throw a spanner into the works somewhere down the line. The one nod towards normality is that the top four teams at the end of the Super Eight will contest the semifinals, with number one in the log playing number four and two against three, one and two having home ground advantage. After that it gets confusing again, but that’s a discussion for another day.