While the game’s administrators appear to want the Currie Cup to go away, the paying public has other ideas — or certain sections of the paying public, anyway. Early on Monday morning the crowds were already snaking out into the street outside Loftus Versfeld and tickets for Saturday’s Currie Cup final between the Blue Bulls and the Cheetahs were sold out in six hours.
When the Bulls beat the Lions in the semifinal last week there were 47 000 people at Loftus; this time around it will be full. The vast majority, of course, will be there to confirm what they already know: that the Bulls are comfortably the best side in the country, whether they are playing in the Super 12 or the Currie Cup.
But everywhere you go in South Africa there are Free State fans, and it’s an orange diaspora not confined to this country. A friend who lives in the United States and regularly attends gridiron and baseball games likes to stand up during quiet moments and bellow, ”Vrystaaatttt!” He never fails to elicit a surprised response from someone in the crowd who thought he or she was unique.
So the Cheetahs will not lack for support on Saturday, despite the fact that they have won the competition but once in their proud history. They have met the Bulls in six previous finals, going back to 1973, and there was a time when the good burghers of Bloemfontein must have been heartily sick of their blue rivals.
Over an eight-year period beginning in 1973, at a time when Free State rugby was stronger than at any time before or since, they reached the final six times. On five of those occasions the Bulls, twice in Bloemfontein and three times in Pretoria, defeated them. In 1976 Free State managed to grab a home final against Western Province and duly won, which just goes to prove that sometimes the best way to overcome a psychological block is to go around it, rather than through it.
Cheetahs coach Rassie Erasmus will have to come up with something equally obtuse if his side is to win on Saturday. Of course, the best way to beat the Bulls is to not let them play at Loftus, but that plan of action is not open to Erasmus. He is going to have to confront the Bulls head-on at forward, where they are strongest, principally because he cannot call on the usual set of quicksilver backs that have made Free State rugby famous.
He can rely on the metronomic kicking skills of his flyhalf, Willem de Waal, to punish Bulls indiscretions, but will there be enough of those to earn anything close to parity? The Lions proved in the semifinals that it is possible to knock the Bulls out of their stride, and the Cheetahs did likewise in Bloemfontein during log play. But the Bulls won both games.
The fact is that under Heyneke Meyer the Bulls have become immensely strong because the senior team knows it is just the tip of the iceberg. Meyer’s system extends to every player in the set-up, from schoolboys to veterans.
Anyone who happened to be in the foyer of the grandstand at Loftus four hours before kick-off last weekend would have seen the match-day squad, already dressed in their warm-up kit, standing around a large television screen watching the Bulls Under 19s winning their final against Western Province at Newlands. The shirts and the moves were the same, only the names were different.
There is a danger that this could all lead to ossification and inevitably there must be a sell-by date on even the best of systems, but right now Meyer’s attention to detail at every level is what gives Bulls teams the edge.
Last week, for instance, the Currie Cup squad dedicated one whole practice session to charging down drop-goal attempts, recognising the threat posed by Lions flyhalf Andre Pretorius. This week, no doubt, time will be spent on a defensive pattern to close down the left side of De Waal, the Cheetahs’ tactical kingpin, forcing him to kick with his right, weaker, foot.
It remains to be seen whether Meyer’s right-hand man and captain, Anton Leonard, will guide tactics on the field. Leonard tore a muscle in scoring a try in the semifinal and, even though he says he’ll be fine, the doubts remain. He desperately wants to slip into retirement with a fourth successive title under his belt and few would begrudge him the honour.
Meanwhile, Cheetahs captain Allen Erasmus Drotske, known to the rugby world as ”Naka”, is also playing his last first-class game this weekend. In his early days he was an explosive player who, being a retreaded flank, lacked the fundamental skills for a hooker. But he worked on his game, won 26 Test caps and never took a backward step.
Drotske might well trade a few of those Springbok jerseys for a chance to lift the Currie Cup on Saturday. Logic suggests that the Bulls cannot lose, but rugby is played with an oval ball and Dame Fortune dispenses some extremely odd bounces.