The Currie Cup begins in earnest this weekend, with all bar the Lions and Bulls having played seven matches, with seven more to come before the semifinals and final. At the halfway mark the five major metropolitan provinces lead the way with Griquas providing a potential fly in the ointment and the Valke and Pumas making up the numbers.
The Lions looked down and out a fortnight ago, but last week’s 19-17 win against the Bulls in Pretoria gave them fresh hope. Unfortunately for them, that hope is set to be dashed, because they will have to face the rest of the tournament without Andre Pretorius.
The Springbok flyhalf can complain until he’s blue in the face about rugby being a team game, but his return to form and fitness turned the Lions into a team again. Having settled on Butch James in Pretorius’s absence, Springbok coach Jake White must be sorely tempted to throw the latter straight into the fray when the Boks play the All Blacks at Loftus next week.
The question White must ask is the one that always comes around at this time of year: what kind of form line does the Currie Cup provide?
Pretorius may have been head and shoulders above every other player at Loftus last week, but what does that prove — that he’s good, or that the Currie Cup is bad?
If nothing else, the Currie Cup reflects the strengths and weaknesses of South African rugby. On a good day it can still draw 30 000-plus crowds and enchant us with its sheer bravado. But last Saturday’s fare at Loftus was desperately pedestrian stuff, played before a crowd of 23 000 and, to be honest, Pretorius didn’t have to do too much to rise above it.
One moment summed up the blind alley that South African rugby heads down whenever threatened. Bulls wing John Mametsa, all 77kg of him, was attempting to get back on to his feet and play the ball after a tackle. Lions tighthead prop Wouter Smit, who tips the scales at 130kg, took exception to this.
Smit lowered his shoulder and crashed into Mametsa like a stolen BMW ramming a cash-in-transit van. There was no attempt by Smit to use his arms in the ”tackle” for he had no interest in the ball and, of course, he achieved his desire: Mametsa took no further part in the game.
The great Irish lock forward, Willie-John McBride, tells a story about a Five Nations game at Lansdowne Road in the early 1960s. Up against a demonstrably superior French team, the Irish ”tactics” involved ”getting their retaliation in first”. The first fight started as the game kicked off and developed into a free-for-all. Said McBride: ”I can’t remember if there was a ball, but if there was I know we didn’t want it.”
Good story. Gets a laugh wherever it’s told. But the game is supposed to have moved on. Why is it, then, that South African teams at all levels, when under pressure, look as though they don’t want the ball? Why is it that White’s Springboks became famous and then infamous for the rush defence? Because that’s the comfort zone. If in doubt, hit someone.
Shift the emphasis back to the Currie Cup and take a look around. The mighty Bulls, winners of the tournament from 2002 to 2004, beaten finalists last year and Super 12 semifinalists in 2006, have lost three home games in this year’s Currie Cup, to the Lions, Western Province and the Sharks.
The structures put in place by Heyneke Meyer are crumbling under new coach Pote Human. Partly it is because he cannot call on Victor Matfield, Bakkies Botha, Jacques Cronje, Wynand Olivier and Bryan Habana, but it is also clear that the opposition have worked out the Bulls in much the same way that the All Blacks and Wallabies have cracked the code of the rush defence.
The problem that this presents is considerable, because the ”old-fashioned virtues” of the Bulls under Meyer provided the template for success at international level for the Springboks. Without wishing to sound like a stuck record, White needs to find some new ideas and move on.
Clearly, though, White has cast a jaundiced eye over the Currie Cup and found it wanting. He cares nothing for Luke Watson’s ability to win ball on the ground and his biggest worry this week will be whether to ”risk” throwing Pretorius back into the international fray, or to play it ”safe” by retaining Butch James at flyhalf.
The match between the Lions and Sharks at Ellis Park may provide the answer to the conundrum on Saturday.
If the Lions revert to the pedestrian no-hopers of the early part of the competition, we will know for certain that the missing ingredient is a certain 27-year-old flyhalf who, with a fine disregard for the traditions of South African rugby, prefers running around players, rather than into them.