The last round of the Currie Cup is upon us and the usual conundrums are in play. Forget the battle for home advantage in the semifinals and consider the overriding tussle for how our oldest competition should be played. For once again, despite the fact that this has been a vintage year, no one yet knows what format the 2007 competition will conform to.
The South African Rugby Union (Saru) has a proposal in front of its executive committee to dismantle the current eight-team format and expand it to 14.
It has not received an awful lot of publicity because Saru has been too busy fighting the fires started by the Southern Spears, but it is potentially every bit as damaging to the game in this country.
What the sport is currently in need of is a little benevolent dictatorship, because a plethora of committees and subcommittees is failing to organise anything. Except that it is so totally against the man’s nature, it would almost be a blessing if Saru president Oregan Hoskins were to adopt the mantle cast aside by Louis Luyt at the end of the last millennium.
Having said that, however, it should be pointed out that it was under Luyt’s presidency that the Currie Cup first dabbled with the idea of 14 teams in one division. Back then it was done in the name of development; the metropolitan provinces were too dominant and the game was ignoring the platteland where most players of colour were to be found.
So the smaller provinces were dragged into the competition and the South Western Districts Eagles set all kinds of scoring records, most of which still stand. Most points conceded in a season, most points conceded in a game, most tries conceded, that kind of thing.
The most remarkable aspect of the expanded competition was that under the guidance of Heyneke Meyer the Eagles became competitive inside two years and actually reached the Currie Cup semifinal in 1997. Unfortunately for Saru’s transformation policy this competitive edge was due almost entirely to the wholesale importing of white Afrikaners from Pretoria.
One of the principal motivations in the application by the Spears to join the Super 14 was the transformation issue. The amalgam of the Eagles, Border and Eastern Province promised a team in which a white player would stand out like a spot on a domino. This was the Utopian ideal in which migrant Afrikaners would be discouraged and local talent would leap to the fore.
But the 14-team Currie Cup has already told us that this is not going to happen. A decade of professionalism has taught us a harsh economic reality. The best players of colour do not stay in their home province; they are headhunted to play for the big five: the Bulls, the Cheetahs, the Lions, the Sharks and Western Province. An expanded Currie Cup is not going to change this fact.
In an attempt to vote the Spears out of existence Saru has embarked on a policy of acquiring shares in the troublesome franchise’s three component parts. Concomitant with the attempt to control the Super 14 is the need to bring some form of accountability to the three most maverick unions in the country.
All of which should not be allowed to sour the final weeks of what has been a Currie Cup to savour. This week’s key encounter is at Loftus Versfeld where the Cheetahs meet the Bulls in a replay of last year’s dramatic final. Victory for the Bulls will ensure them a home semifinal and eliminate one of the Lions, Sharks or Western Province from the mix.
Victory for the Cheetahs, on the other hand, will open up a plethora of possibilities, including one in which the Bulls go from second in the log to fifth, thereby missing out on a final appearance for the first time in five years.
That’s what can happen when a competition is properly organised.