RUGBY
Andy Capostagno
The difficulties faced by South African teams in the Super 12 were etched in sharp relief last week. In an attempt to put a positive spin on the situation, various people have suggested that 40 minutes of good rugby from the Sharks, a narrow defeat for the Stormers and a more comprehensive one for the Cats provided a ray of light for incoming Springbok coach Rudolf Straeuli.
But what these results really prove is that we have collectively lowered our expectations. The Sharks won against a very ordinary Blues team, one that even in its great incarnations of the early years of this tournament didn’t often play to its potential in South Africa.
The Stormers lost 49-46 in a game that was theirs for the taking, by giving away a couple of soft tries when all the hard work had been done, most of it with only 14 men on the park. And the Cats were guilty of the same indolence against the Chiefs, allowing Roger Randle to fall over the line uncontested from a tap penalty, and then letting the same player score from inside his own half by standing off him.
None of the Reds, Blues or Chiefs will feature in the semifinals and those who have suggested that an African renaissance is just around the corner are really reacting to the desperate disappointments of the first half of the competition.
The fact is that as long as South African teams are forced to spend a month on the road, when their counter-parts in Australia and New Zealand only need a fortnight, this tournament will never be played on a level playing field. What it means is that when early results go awry, as they did for the Sharks and Cats this year, a siege mentality develops and expressive rugby flies out of the window.
The celebrations of the Sharks players at the final whistle on Saturday were as much to do with relief as they were about winning. Furthermore, if the body language was telling the truth there were several Sharks who were out on their feet in the final quarter.
New coach Kevin Putt may have hit the nail on the head when he suggested that the relaxed laws regarding replacements have helped build a generation of players who don’t regard rugby as an 80-minute game. Clearly he was making a point with one or two players by not replacing them and was prepared to sacrifice the match in the process.
It is brave decisions like this that our game now needs. Frans Ludeke may have done many things wrong in his first season as Cats coach, but at least he has seen the light at flyhalf. Last season the Cats had the best pack in the competition and with the pressure that they exerted on opposition defences, made the semifinals thanks to the unerring boot of Louis Koen.
This year the pack has had to almost totally reinvent itself and it took Ludeke a few games to realise that Koen was a liability at flyhalf in a team that did not dominate up front, something that Harry Viljoen found out to his cost on the end of season Springbok tour last year.
So Ludeke took the decision to bring in Andre Pretorius, a flyhalf who has been damned with faint praise as a sevens player who was too insubstantial to play 15 a side. In a losing team last week Pretorius was a shining light and with some minor adjustments to his place-kicking technique he could play international rugby this year.
Pretorius will need better scrumhalf service than he got from Grant Bartle, however, and Straeuli’s decision to go back to Springbok trials this year can only benefit him. Straeuli can now look at Pretorius alongside both Bolla Conradie and Craig Davidson and make an informed decision in a match situation.
It seems a lifetime, but it is in fact less than six months ago that Viljoen considered the art of scrumhalf play in this country so moribund that he took Joost van der Westhuizen and Deon de Kock on tour. Trials may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but in certain areas they reveal sheep in wolves clothing rather well.
It is always the case that a good scrumhalf can make something out of nothing and that may be required of Conradie this week when the Stormers play the Crusaders in Christchurch. It is not impossible that they could win, but absolutely everything will have to go right for them, and unfortunately that has not been the theme of the 2002 Super 12 for South African teams.