A month-long bus tour of the country has just concluded. Under the banner of the “Champion tour”, the rugby public across the country has been given the opportunity to drool over the trophies currently held by South African teams. Cheek by jowl sit the Currie Cup, the Webb Ellis trophy, the Mandela Plate, the IRBÂ 7s trophy, the Tri-Nations trophy and several more.
On the basis that so much evidence of success may never happen concurrently again, the South African Rugby Union (Saru) chose to celebrate the fact. There have been plenty of occasions in the 18 years since the union lost its pariah status when such a display of hubris would have been horribly misplaced, but for once this is the right time and the right place.
It is perhaps not coincidental that the tour should end in the same week as Saru’s AGM. Perhaps the organisers were wary of another messy scramble for power and wanted to draw a line under what had been achieved before fighting new battles. But last weekend Mark Alexander, Saru’s deputy president, announced that he would not contest the position of president with the incumbent, Oregan Hoskins.
So instead of the furious politicking that normally precedes an AGM, an eerie quiet has settled over the corridors of power. Hoskins, the former lawyer from Pietermaritzburg with antecedents on the island of St Helena, will be unopposed for his third two-year term of office. And while there are some who accuse Hoskins of timorousness in certain areas, few can argue that under his benign rule the game in this country has rarely, if ever, been stronger or more affluent.
It is easy to forget the parlous state the union was in when Hoskins succeeded Brian van Rooyen in 2006. Andy Colquhoun, for years the estimable editor of the SA Rugby Annual and now the head of communications at Saru, described the first months of Hoskins’s presidency as an exercise in “unscrambling the omelette he had been left by his predecessor”.
Two years later Hoskins was challenged unsuccessfully by his deputy, Mike Stofile. The brother of Sports Minister Makhenkesi, Stofile took his defeat badly. He said: “I’ve been saying for four years now there is no place for black people in South African rugby and this is the final nail for black people in this country.”
After a period in the wilderness, Stofile was accepted back into the ranks as an independent director on the board of South African Rugby last year, but pulled out of the presidential race earlier this month. His political clout will be diminished if, as has been mooted, President Jacob Zuma’s Cabinet reshuffle ends the stormy tenure of Makhenkesi Stofile.
Unless there is some 11th-hour intrigue, Saru can look forward to 12 months of relative calm before the panic that normally ensues in the months ahead of a rugby World Cup. It is unlikely that we will see another champions tour in 2011, but it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the Super 14 trophy will have the Bulls’ name engraved on it for a third time by then.
It is difficult at the moment to imagine who is going to challenge the Bulls at the sharp end of this year’s competition. For the first month the Loftus faithful were treated to the glamorous side of the blue machine, but last week they were given a lesson in how to win ugly. Down 12-0 early on, the Bulls trailed the Hurricanes for 67 minutes before Morné Steyn’s penalty gave his team a slender 19-18 lead. There have been many times in the past when a streetwise New Zealand team would have found a way past the Bulls as the pressure mounted and the minutes dwindled. But this Bulls team is made of sterner stuff.
If the first month was rugby for the masses, the last four minutes against the Hurricanes were rugby for the connoisseur. The Bulls won a penalty in their own half and Steyn kicked it to touch inside the opposition 22. Victor Matfield won the lineout and his team kept the ball for the final four minutes of the match. Fourie du Preez popped pass after pass to the forwards and the Hurricanes died a slow death.
It is this kind of rugby that lawmakers habitually target when they tamper with the laws, and it is fair to say it is not pretty to watch. But my word, it is impressive. Those four minutes will give the Bulls the final boost needed as they contemplate their next four weeks on the road. Just as they know they can score points when they need to, they also know they can keep the ball — and that, in the long run, is probably more important.
The Bulls top the log with a game in hand from the Stormers, who have a bye this weekend. In the coming weeks the two sides will play the Force, the Blues, the Chiefs and the Reds. It is not beyond the Bulls to win all those games, although they would probably be content with three out of four. The Stormers have the bonus of playing each team the week after the Bulls and they will enjoy exploiting the physical toll left in the wake of Pretoria’s finest.