The wheels have been wobbling since the season began but they finally fell off last weekend when the Lions lost 73-12 against the Waratahs in Sydney. Hitherto there had always been something for new coach Dick Muir to enthuse about, but there is little anyone can say when a team concedes 11 tries in a single afternoon.
It looks set to be another one of those seasons for the Lions — one spent not in pursuit of trophies but of respectability. It’s likely to be a forlorn pursuit because Muir has a bare cupboard with which to work.
The Lions as a franchise have hit rock bottom. A sure sign that the players had recognised that fact came before the season had even begun — three of their best players jumped ship. Jaque Fourie, the only current Springbok to be in the Lions den last year, walked through the holes in his contract and ended up in Cape Town. Louis Ludik and Willem Alberts used the Fourie precedent to escape to Durban.
It would be surprising if Cobus Grobbelaar and Jano Vermaak, the two best players still with the franchise, were still involved this time next year. Both are unfortunate to be playing in an era when their respective positions, openside flank and scrumhalf, are unlikely to have a “situations vacant” sign placed outside the Springbok dressing room any time soon. Both are young enough to build a lucrative career in Europe or, perhaps more depressingly, for the Melbourne Rebels when the Super 15 begins next year.
This means that if Muir is still involved with the Lions in 2011, it is likely to be as the manager of a crèche. The ongoing problem for the Lions is that their best schoolboy and under-20 players are now fair game for all the other sides in the country. That’s what happens when the senior side loses too often: defeat becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It’s hardly a unique situation in Super Rugby. For the first two years of the Super 12, the South African sides played as provinces. From the moment that the franchise system was adopted in 1998, it all went pear-shaped for the Cats and the Bulls. Few will now recall that in the first five seasons of franchise rugby the Bulls won a total of seven games.
The Cats were an unholy alliance of the Cheetahs and the Lions. They reached the semifinals twice, in 2000 and 2001, under Kiwi coach Laurie Mains. But the Cats and, following the award of the fifth South African franchise in 2007, the Lions and the Cheetahs, have never subsequently been in any danger of finishing in the top half of the table.
The problem for both the Lions and Cheetahs has been a desperate inability to perform against foreign opposition, either at home or away. This suggests that next year’s Super 15 may throw them a lifeline. The new system will do away with the “everyone plays everyone else” system in favour of three “conferences” in the respective Sanzar (South Africa, New Zealand and Australia rugby) countries.
Each of the South African sides will play at home and away against the other four. That’s eight games on South African soil against South African opposition. Given the way that our sides habitually raise their games against traditional rivals, the chance of success for under-performing franchises is greatly enhanced and there is the concomitant opportunity to build momentum before travelling overseas.
But what if that doesn’t happen and the Lions prove as clueless in the Super 15 as they have for most of the duration of the professional era? Will someone at the South African Rugby Union (Saru) grab the opportunity to replace the Lions with the Southern Kings?
After all, the oft-repeated argument that a “development team” will be cannon fodder in Super Rugby is difficult to sustain when you look at the melancholy history of the Lions or the Cats.
It is a sad fact that the stadium formerly known as Ellis Park has lost its aura. Poor results for the home side have produced poor crowds and clearly the players no longer feel the surge of energy so necessary for professionals when they step on to the once-hallowed turf. Why, then, would anyone argue against a chance to reinvigorate the game in the Eastern Cape in stadiums purpose-built for the World Cup? After all, they will rapidly become white elephants if rugby doesn’t embrace them. If you look dispassionately at the past decade, vested interest is the only thing that stands in the way.
The question to be asked in the halls of power in the heart of the Johannesburg CBD is whether anyone truly believes that the wheel can turn. Perhaps we need to look overseas for inspiration. Those who assumed that the Queensland Reds would endure another five years of dismal results have been jolted out of their complacency by the class of 2010.
Brisbane is a city that has always embraced the game of rugby. It has produced some of the greatest players in the history of the game: people such as Tim Horan and John Eales.
Johannesburg has been playing the game longer than Brisbane and has produced more all-time greats. Hope was the last thing left in Pandora’s Box.