Saturday’s Currie Cup final is likely to be a torrid affair, with no quarter asked or given Andy Colquhoun Most of us will never play in a Currie Cup final. And we probably have as much chance of properly comprehending the sound and fury of the rugby coalface as a cat has of riding a scooter. And Saturday’s 40th edition of South African rugby’s domestic showpiece is not about to break with tradition. On the contrary, professional rugby has bred players who are on average bigger and faster than they have ever been, travelling at higher average speeds to produce ever more frightening collisions.
And yet, having said all that, when it comes to a match between the Sharks and Western Province (whether they’re in Currie Cup or Super 12 livery) I suspect that the men among us know exactly what Saturday is all about. Yep, it’s an old-fashioned pissing contest. My last such contest was so long ago that people thought the Worldwide Web was a religious cult, but every time these two bang heads it seems not about rugby but machismo – whose is the biggest, strongest, goes furthest. How it all started is lost in the mists of time. What is certain, however, is that these two have shown considerably more fight than Andrew Golota when they have met, and it’s about time someone took them to one side and told them both to get on with the game or see a further erosion of South African rugby prestige. Their benchmark should be taken from last weekend – not by anything that happened on these shores but by events taking place in Canterbury where Wellington held on to beat their hosts 35-29 in a gripping New Zealand National Provincial Championship final. The rugby was fast, slick, imaginative and remorselessly hard but both teams were clearly intent on winning by playing the better rugby rather than by playground bullying. (A quiz question for the future by the way: Which Western Province player won a winner’s medal in 2000 before the Currie Cup final kicked off? Answer: Morne van der Merwe, who was in Wellington’s front row last weekend). That thrilling match was in stark contrast to the trench warfare served up between the South African sides in Super 12 – when the stakes were last as high as they will be on Saturday. Remember? It was a real Nightmare on Sarfu Street: Shudder at Stormers vs Bulls (19-19); Scream at Sharks vs Bulls (14-14); Whimper at Cats vs Sharks (28-27).
Even the mesmeric second-half performance produced by the Stormers to beat the Sharks 32-28 in Durban came on the back of a spiteful, tempestuous first half in which unfortunate referee Tappe Henning looked like no one so much as Evita Bezuidenhout taking charge of a World Wrestling Federation bout. If these two sides do decide to play rugby it should be a considerable treat. We’ll have the contrast of Natal’s broadsword against the rapier of Province, featuring a cast list of 24 Springbok tourists and another half-dozen South African under-23s. Rudi Straeuli – the man with a plan – deserves enormous credit for so quickly reviving Natal’s fortunes after a disastrous Super 12 campaign. His decision to pick and then stick with young halfbacks Craig Davidson and Butch James has paid dividends. In Durban they’re talking of James as a new flat-lying, hard-hitting Henry Honiball with a boot to ensure the game is played in the opposition’s half. The youngsters (Davidson is 23 and James 21) have been grafted on to the back of the furnace-hardened steel of an experienced pack to give a 10-man package that hardly needs the assistance of big-hitting backs such as Stefan Terblanche, Gaffie du Toit and Trevor Halstead. Gert Smal has been equally creative at Province. The 23-year-old Chris Rossouw will play just his 12th match as a flyhalf in Saturday’s final but so dramatic has been his impact since making his debut in the position in the Vodacom Cup in April that he now finds himself a Springbok. Rossouw has that apparently dreamy quality of elder brother Pieter but he can make opposition defences gape and flounder like elderly tourists after a fleecing by a beachfront pickpocket. There is more than a touch of champion Wallaby Stephen Larkham about him and in that comparison surely lies Harry Viljoen’s long-term hopes of a happy and fruitful tenure as Springbok coach. Outside Rossouw is a Springbok backline that is at its most deadly from turnover possession. The Sharks will know that denying Province any such possession and properly following their own kicks will sharply reduce Province’s effectiveness. Cup finals often fail to live up to their hype, but these two sides could kick off a new century of Currie Cup finals in memorable style while for Western Province a unique place in the record books beckons. They were the first Currie Cup champions of the 19th century (1889) and of the 20th (1904) and victory on Saturday would give them an unbeatable three-peat.
Natal had to wait a century for their first title in 1990, since when they have established themselves as a dominant force in the South African game with the baton now being handed to a new generation of Natalian heroes. Their predecessors fumbled it last season when the Lions floored them with five tries to one in a 32-9 victory and there is no chance of a repeat of that massacre. Home-ground advantage will count for a lot – particularly if Natal slow up the going by keeping their grass as long as they did for the semifinal – but will it be enough? Province look to have more ways to win, either through the boot of Braam van Straaten or their backline match-winners and they have a curiosity on their side – the past three winners of the title all failed to make the previous year’s semis (Province in 1997, the Bulls in 1998 and the Lions in 1999). Of course, such calculations will fly out of the window at 5.10pm on Saturday when they let slip the dogs of war…