The Crusaders and Waratahs will be doing their utmost to change the direction but come next week it should be the Stormers and Bulls heading to Soweto for the Super 14 final
Two weeks ago in the privacy of their dressing room at Loftus Versfeld, the Crusaders vowed to get even. Undone by a disputed try after the hooter had gone, the most successful team in the history of Super Rugby felt cheated. The Bulls won the game 40-35, a result that allowed them to send the B team to Newlands last weekend.
By contrast, the Crusaders had to return to Christchurch, beat the Brumbies and then get back on a plane to cross the time zones again. They will have spent the trip remembering what went right against the Bulls at Loftus and planning to burgle a result that few in South Africa believe is possible.
If there is a sense of triumphalism among the Bulls’ supporters it is understandable, for their team has won the title in two of the past three years.
This has been a season of record ticket sales, with the 40 000 available for the Orlando Stadium semifinal snapped up in minutes on Monday morning. The vast majority of those marching to Soweto do so in expectation rather than hope.
And yet the Crusaders believe the Bulls can be beaten. For a template they will have studied the games lost by the Bulls on tour, in Auckland and Brisbane, and looked for the underlying theme. And though the laws may change every year certain principles remain the same: good teams base their success on forward domination. To beat the Bulls you have to confront them physically and keep the ball away from them.
Bulls coach Frans Ludeke was for a few seasons given the nickname “The Geologist”. It stemmed from his previous job as coach of the Lions when he responded to a question in a press conference about how his team might improve: “It’s not rock science,” was his memorable retort.
And indeed, the way to overcome the Bulls is relatively well known, but it is one thing knowing how to do it and quite another putting it into practice. The Crusaders are good enough, as they showed at Loftus a fortnight ago, but against a fresh team playing in what will no doubt be a carnival atmosphere, it is asking an awful lot to criss-cross the globe and still front up physically.
There are fewer reasons to expect an upset in Cape Town. The Stormers hit a speed bump against the Sharks in Durban two weeks ago, but Ludeke’s decision to rest his stars last week took the pressure off and Bryan Habana’s fourth-minute try against his erstwhile teammates settled what nerves remained.
Before the season began familiar doubts surrounded the Stormers. They had acquired two great Springbok backs in Habana and Jacque Fourie, but would their forwards be able to provide the kind of ball required to unleash them? The answer was an emphatic yes, even after their best prop, Wicus Blaauw, got injured.
There is a theory that the Stormers had been playing with the handbrake on until Luke Watson’s decision to sign for Bath. A lot of people went out of their way to defend Watson’s captaincy, but a cloud seemed to have been lifted when Schalk Burger assumed the leadership role.
Equally there is no doubt that Burger’s own game was transformed by the added responsibility of captaincy. Gone was the crash-ball bully of the past few years and back came the handling skills that marked him out as a young man. The physical intensity remained, but the desire to keep the ball alive outweighed everything else.
Therein lay the major change between this Stormers team and its predecessors of the past few years. Burger and his cohorts, principal among them Andries Bekker and Francois Louw, were able to retain attacking momentum by refusing to allow the ball to die at the tackle. That allowed the backs to retain their shape and depth, rather than asking them to lie flat to prevent the opposition attacking from turnover ball.
It all came together on a balmy Friday night in Cape Town when the Stormers destroyed the Crusaders 42-14.
Considering all the humiliation that the Crusaders have heaped upon South African sides over the years, this was a win for the ages. If the Kiwi side were unlucky against the Bulls a week later, at Newlands they were never in the contest.
It is that performance that should be uppermost in the home team’s mind when they emerge from the tunnel to play the Waratahs this week, and not the nerve-racked defeat against the Sharks a week later. They can also look to a log play victory over the Waratahs that, rather ironically, was their only win against Australian opposition of the season.
Halfway through the competition it was the Reds, not the Waratahs, who looked the more likely to represent Australia in the playoffs. But the Waratahs finished the stronger of the two and will regard the semifinal as a chance to rain on South Africa’s parade.
As with the Crusaders, an upset is quite possible, but the signs seem to point just one way: Bulls vs Stormers in Soweto one week hence.