If the tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth emanating from south of the Hex river were to be taken seriously, we should now be lamenting the demise of South African rugby. Again. An unlikely series of results from here on in notwithstanding, Western Province will not win the Currie Cup this year. Ag shame, pass the tissues.
That may seem like gloating, but it is not meant to. Province won the last two Currie Cups because they had a well-balanced team that could, through the power of its forwards and the guile of its outside backs, score tries from anywhere. They may have under performed as a unit at Test level, but domestic rugby has not often thrown up a better back three than Percy Montgomery, Breyton Paulse and Pieter Rossouw.
Of the three Rossouw was the most maddening; he was the ideas man who spotted gaps before they had appeared, but as frequently as he ran into them to spark a move, he fell over his own bootlaces before the thought had a chance to move from infancy to adolescence.
Nevertheless, without Rossouw in the mix Paulse has looked as lost as Laurel without Hardy, while Montgomery has eschewed his traditional Shakespearian role of Fool, to be the one thing that few believed he was ever capable of; a good, honest, unpretentious fullback.
When Province play the Pumas on Friday night at Newlands, Rossouw will be preparing to play for London Irish, Montgomery will be sitting out with a hip pointer injury and, if the rumours are to be believed, coach Gert Smal has decided to ”rest” Paulse. That it should come to this!
If he was unaware of it before, Smal must now be familiar with the truism that the coach, like the team, is only as good as the last game. In the heat of the moment Province fans have forgotten the back-to-back titles of the last two seasons, not to mention a few invigorating wins by the Stormers in the Super 12.
What they now want to know is why the team that kept the flickering flame of South African flair alive for so long could be so moribund in the 35-26 defeat by the Blue Bulls in Pretoria last weekend. In other words, how could a team with an average pack and a callow youth of 19 at flyhalf beat Province without once needing to change tactics?
It might be argued that it didn’t need a crystal ball to see this performance coming. Successive defeats to Free State in Bloemfontein and Natal in Cape Town revealed the sad truth at the heart of Province’s problems; they no longer have a ball-winning pack.
Quite apart from the injury-related absence of their two fetcher flanks, Hendrick Gerber and Corné Krige, the tight five is not pulling (or pushing) its weight. At lock Quinton Davids is a shadow of the player who earned Springbok selection earlier this year, while Hottie Louw, the great enthusiast, must learn the difference between a ruck and a maul in order to stay on the right side of the referee.
And then there is the front row. When the dust had settled at Newlands after last year’s Currie Cup final, four Province players wandered back out into the middle to share a quiet beer and celebrate the defeat of Natal; Krige, De Wet Barry, Charl Marais and Robbie Kempson. For the last two named it was a poignant moment; they had played their last game for Province before heading north to earn pounds.
So while the break up of the back three is at the forefront of discussions currently, perhaps we should spare a thought for the break up of the front three. Kempson, Marais and Cobus Visagie (currently injured) were the front row for much of the past two seasons for Province and the impact player on the bench was Toks van der Linde (retired), Springboks all.
Successful teams assimilate a psychological support base that assumes victory is inevitable. In the absence of so many vital cogs it seems that Province have forgotten how to win. Smal’s task is to reboot the hard drive and debug the software, but he’ll have to wait for next year to do it.