At the halfway mark in the Super 12 there is a familiar look to the log. Four New Zealand sides occupy the top four positions, two Australian sides complete the top half and the four South African franchises run (and in some cases, limp) from
seventh to 10th place.
At this stage of the season the log tells no lies. The four Kiwi sides have lost just five games out of 22; the Brumbies and Waratahs have each won three, lost three, while the South African sides have all won two matches.
The Bulls and Stormers will make up their game in hand on the Cats and Sharks when they play each other this weekend in Pretoria. The standard bearers for the Super 12 this year are the Blues, the cham-pions of the first two years of com- petition.
They have a full house of 25 points from their five games and probably only need another 10 points from their next six to reach the semifinals, 14 to ensure a home berth. Given that their final three matches are at Eden Park against, respectively, the Sharks, Cats and Hurricanes, it is almost impossible for them not to reach the semifinals. And that is as it should be, for while the Waratahs left South Africa with glowing reputations, two successive defeats against the Stormers and the Reds have reduced them to lowly mortal status.
The Blues, on the other hand, have gone from peak to peak on either side of the Tasman, playing a brand of rugby guaranteed to put bums on seats anywhere in the world. This week the Blues travel to Dunedin to play the Highlanders, a team that began with three successive wins, but has been on a downward spiral ever since losing to the Cats in Johannesburg.
In filthy weather Laurie Mains’s team lost by a single point to the Crusaders last week, thereby breaking a 17 match winning sequence for the home side at the House of Pain. After a run like that two defeats in a row might seem pure fantasy, but this Blues team is good enough not just to win, but to dominate. The history of the Super 12 suggests that those who wager money on the Hurricanes end up out of pocket. So although they lie second at the moment and although Christian Cullen appears to have cast aside the injury problems of last year to return to his best form, it is wise not to get carried away.
Three of their four wins have been against South African opposition and they’ll need to win against a few compatriots to make a semifinal spot a reality. This week Springbok coach Rudolf Straeuli visited Ellis Park to watch the Cats play the Sharks. At the end of the match he said that it was entirely possible for a South African side to reach the semifinals.
In order for that to happen, however, they will have to cure some maddening inconsistencies. The Sharks, for instance, beat the Brumbies in some style, but lost the rest of their home games. The last of those defeats, against the Highlanders two weeks ago, was a truly dreadful performance, but against the Cats they put on a display so diametrically opposite that they might have been coached by Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, rather than Kevin Putt and John Allan.
History teaches us that the Sharks and the Cats have too few points in the bag ahead of their month long road trip to have any chance of making the last four, but teams that can play as well as the Sharks did against the Cats, or as the Cats did against the Highlanders can never be written off. At the very least they can cause some significant collateral damage to the hopes of a few Antipodean sides.
For the Stormers and the Bulls the future is filled with home games, but these come with the added pressure of winning being a necessity. With 10 and 11 log points respectively, each knows that they’ll probably need 24 points out of a possible 30 to reach the semis.
That means that any loss will necessitate the gathering of bonus points to finish in the top four. Of course, after Saturday’s game one team will be in precisely that situation, always assuming that it’s not a draw.
Given that it’s been a month since the Bulls won a game the visitors might be seen as narrow favourites, particularly since the Stormers played so well in their final tour match to beat the Waratahs.
But if Rudy Joubert’s resurrection of an apparently doomed franchise is to be anything more than moonshine this is a game the Bulls must win. After criticism of his side’s tactics in the big defeat by the Brumbies, Joubert said that he would continue to empower his backs into running with the ball. But this is a game where the Bulls should revert to the basics that won the Currie Cup last year.
Expect a titanic forward battle of the kind to bring a smile to the face of the Springbok coach just two months before he announces his first squad of the season.