Super 14 rugby will test the resilience of its new pecking order when the sixth round begins on Friday.
After years of underachievement, South African teams have placed themselves among the top of the standings after a strong start to the season.
New Zealand sides — in the absence of 22 All Blacks — have come to occupy the mediocre middle ground, while the Australian teams, winless in the last two rounds, have fallen back to bicker near the foot of the table.
The resurgent Lions, formerly the underperforming Cats, have come to epitomise the improvement in the South African franchises in this World Cup year.
They lie third in the championship table after last week’s 26-20 win over the Queensland Reds, sandwiched between the unbeaten Sharks and the Bulls in a South African bloc that holds three of the top-four places.
In the past, South African teams have been let down by poor discipline, an inability to adapt to changing trends and an inclination to be one-dimensional. The South African sides in this year’s competition are notable for the broad spectrum of their styles, for their sound tactical policies and their adaptability.
Most notably, however, the South African franchises have mastered the skill of winning away from home. While the Sharks’ unbeaten record has been based around a beneficial home draw, the Lions have won twice in Australia and the Bulls broke a long-standing hoodoo when they beat the ACT Brumbies last week in Canberra.
Nor are the south Africans resting on their laurels. Their emphasis this season has been on steady and continuous improvement.
”To win two games in Australia is a great achievement,” Lions coach Eugene Eloff said. ”But we will have to improve our one-on-one tackling before the next game. Defence is usually one of our strengths. I will identify players who missed tackles and see what happened there. We also lost too many line-outs, which is not acceptable.”
New Zealand still holds the top place on the championship table through the Auckland Blues, who lead the Sharks and Lions by two points and meet the Lions it Auckland on Saturday.
The other New Zealand teams will attempt in round six to perform more creditably than they managed in round five. The Hurricanes, second entering the round, lost to the last-placed Stormers and now face the Western Force in Perth, a ground on which the Force have never won.
The Otago Highlanders play the Reds, seeking to recover momentum lost in last week’s heavy loss to the Blues, while the Chiefs and Crusaders return from South Africa to lick their wounds during sixth-round byes.
The Australian teams have more to prove. No Australian team has managed a win in the last two rounds of the competition and the Aussies have won only two games in three rounds. The performances of the Reds against the Lions, the Brumbies against the Bulls and the Waratahs against the Force in round five were all sub-standard.
Those performances led Reds and former Wallabies coach Eddie Jones to suggest the creation of a fourth Australian franchise had weakened Australia’s Super 14 standing.
”It has been exacerbated at Super 14 level with the advent of the fourth side, which was always going to cause pain. We knew that. And it’s coming through,” Jones said. — Sapa-AP