Jake White must wonder what all the fuss is about. Six weeks into his tenure as Springbok coach everything in the garden is lovely. There are three South African teams in the top six of the Super 12 and a host of players are delivering the goods in truckloads week after week.
Could this burst of form be due to the fact, as White has suggested, that there are currently no players holding a Springbok contract? The prospect of unemployment, or of failing to maintain payments on 4x4s and properties on residential golf courses, would naturally tend to concentrate the mind, but surely that wouldn’t account for such a mighty change in collective fortunes.
There is always the possibility, of course, that we’re getting carried away for the wrong reasons, that we’re the victims of some clever smoke and mirrors effects. After all, the Stormers and their fans have been up and down like the Assyrian Empire, while the Bulls have only won three of their five home games, and history tells us that it will only get tougher once they start to travel.
The real reason for this outbreak of national optimism is principally due to the performance of the Sharks in the Antipodes. After a dismal opening match against the Waratahs, Kevin Putt’s men lost against the Brumbies when a draw or win would have been possible without some questionable refereeing decisions, but then beat the Highlanders and Hurricanes in successive weeks.
The margin of defeat against the Brumbies was three points, while the margin of victory against both the Highlanders and Hurricanes was but a single point.
Which only goes to show that Micawber’s analysis of the human condition is as true as ever: ‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.â€
Or, in words other than those of Dickens, it would be as well not to get carried away by such knife-edge results. After all, in the final match of the tour Australian referee Stuart Dickinson appeared to blow for a South African side for the first time in recorded history. Take the points and run.
People who should know better are already suggesting that a semifinal spot for the Sharks is a fait accompli, given that after this week’s break they have six successive home games. But you only need to have short-term memory to bring to mind last season, when the Sharks lost four of their five home games, and that after beating the Brumbies in their first.
In 2002 the Sharks changed coaches halfway through the season and ended with a home record of three wins and three defeats. Those who are assuming a semifinal berth and who will arrive with the tackle bags this year are harking back to the glory days under Rudolf Straeuli’s back-to-basics coaching, when the Sharks were unbeaten at home and went all the way to the final.
Incidentally, for those who believe in omens, in 2001 the Sharks won two games by a single point (against the Highlanders and the Brumbies) and lost one by the same margin against the Cats.
Incontestably, however, the Sharks have an easier run in than either the Stormers or Bulls who meet each other in Cape Town this weekend before heading off down under. The Bulls have never beaten the Stormers and you have to go back to 1996, the first year of the competition, to find a positive result for the then Northern Transvaal against Western Province.
As ever, it is useless to study form lines for enlightenment in a domestic tussle, however. The Bulls are on a roll, their forwards are the envy of every other side and the Stormers simply imploded against the Brumbies last week. All of which may quite easily add up to a home win for the Jekyll and Hyde denizens of Newlands.