Sepp Blatter and his mates at Fifa should be grateful that they managed to put draconian rules in place with the South African government ahead of the Soccer World Cup. That’s because, with just more than a month to go to the start of the round-ball tournament, rugby fever has gripped the country thanks to the exploits of the Bulls and Stormers.
Full houses at both Newlands and Loftus last weekend should put into perspective Fifa’s ongoing problems with ticket sales in this country. The vista provided by both games should cast a burden of shame on the profiteers who persuaded our government that South Africa could not possibly host a World Cup without purpose-built new stadiums.
The fact is that sports grounds around the world are all alike. Some are ugly, some are beautiful, but they are transformed by one thing and one thing alone: bums on seats. Newlands may be a relic of an age remembered principally for its political incorrectness, but try telling that to the people crammed into it for last week’s destruction of the Crusaders.
Those people will be able to tell their grandchildren about the day when the behemoths of Canterbury were felled by a performance few rugby teams in history would have been capable of. No doubt some of them will make use of one of Fifa’s advertising slogans: ‘Make sure you can say I was there.”
In just less than a month from now there is likely to be a carnival in either Cape Town or Pretoria to celebrate a Super 14 final between two South African sides for only the second time in history. It will, naturally, be sold out and it will cause the rugby-loving public of South Africa to lose its sense of perspective temporarily. It will add up to a marketing person’s nightmare. The last thing that Fifa would have wished for ahead of the World Cup is likely to happen: a celebration of this country’s lofty standing among the devotees of the oval ball.
The chauvinists will hope that the Stormers host the final at a traditional rugby venue. But imagine the scene at Orlando Stadium if, as is more likely, the Bulls play both the semi and the final away from the ground that Fifa, in its anal-retentive selfishness, has booked for the World Cup. Fifty thousand rugby fans descending on Soweto will do more for nation-building than any amount of diski dancing.
It is not, of course, a fait accompli. With two games of log play left, the Stormers have a four-point lead over the Crusaders and the Reds and this week they have to travel to Durban to play the Sharks, a team they traditionally struggle against. For their part, the Bulls entertain, if that is the right word, the Crusaders at Fortress Loftus. They need just two points from their last two games to ensure a home semifinal and in all likelihood will achieve them this week.
Assuming that both the Bulls and Stormers win this weekend, the final match of log play at Newlands next week could be academic. It is one of those delicious ironies of fixture allocation that pits the Bulls against the Stormers in Cape Town at 5pm on Saturday May 15.
Depending on what happens between now and then, the teams will either know exactly what they need to do, or, having already done it, rehearse the final. Assuming that there are no banana skins in the semis, of course.
There should not be. In the long, barren decade before a South African team finally won the Super 14, away wins in the semifinals were few and far between, even if the away team had not travelled across time zones. There is simply too much in favour of the side that finishes in the top two.
So although neither coach will say in public anything beyond the formulaic “one game at a time” mantra, every other section of Stormers and Bulls management cannot help but prepare for a parochial final. South African rugby is on the crest of a wave that began five years ago and shows no sign of breaking any time soon.
Not long ago the best we could hope for was one team in the last four, a team that would inevitably crash out at the semifinal stage. We looked to New Zealand and Australia for the lead and a successful template. We abandoned provincial identities built up over a century and followed slavishly the franchise system adopted in the Antipodes. Now South African rugby leads the way in the global game, even if the Springboks do not win every game they play.
It would be wise to celebrate these things now, before the month of madness devoted to football has come and gone. It may help us gain a sense of perspective when the power brokers of Fifa have finished enriching themselves at our expense and moved on to the next gullible host nation.