/ 8 July 2011

From Super to Springboks

As the Lions are left with red faces and the Reds host the Crusaders in the final, it's time for the Springboks to prepare for the Tri-Nations.

This time last year the football World Cup was in full swing and, as a direct result, the Bulls were the darlings of Soweto. Having hosted the Super 14 semi-final and final at the FNB Stadium, the Bulls franchise somehow turned the Jukskei into the Rubicon. All the talk was of a new era featuring buy-in from black supporters for the oval ball game.

What a difference a year makes. If there is a grain of truth emanating from the spat at the Golden Lions Rugby Union (GLRU), it is that the union wanted to leave Ellis Park and play their home games in Soweto. But Guma TAC, the investors who came on board last October, regarded the move as financially untenable.

So the dichotomy is deliciously ironic. The “amateurs”, as Guma TAC referred to the GLRU board under president Kevin de Klerk, want to go, but the “professionals”, headed by a BEE millionaire, want to stay. There is much more to it than that, of course, but it goes to show that we live in interesting times.

The Lions have to find a way now to focus on the Currie Cup, although unlike the rest of South Africa’s Super Rugby franchises, they will not have to worry about losing their stars to the Springboks, for they don’t have any.

That’s a little unkind, as both Butch James and Elton Jantjies are in the current Springbok training squad, but it illustrates how the Lions enjoy continuity between international and domestic rugby in a way other unions do not.

In Australia there is no such thing as domestic rugby at provincial level once the Super Rugby season ends, which explains why their administrators have been the driving force behind the expansion of the competition. In both New Zealand and South Africa it has been at the expense of over 100 years of tradition.

There are those who will tell you that the recently concluded Super Rugby play-offs were unfairly loaded in Australia’s favour because three of their five franchises were not up to the standard required of the tournament. But the last laugh reverberates down under, for the Reds will host the final this week in Brisbane against the Crusaders.

Given the clinical dismantling the New Zealanders achieved against the Stormers in Cape Town last week, the away side has a chance. But the Crusaders have now travelled across the time zones twice in 10 days and their air miles have ratcheted up to the 100000 mark for the competition. Nevertheless, it would be a brave critic who wrote them off.

The Reds have been the sleeping giant of Australian rugby ever since the game went professional after the conclusion of the 1995 World Cup. The great sides of the early 1990s featured icons such as John Eales, Tim Horan, Jason Little and Michael Lynagh, and they won the Super 10 in both 1994 and 1995.

They topped the log in 1996, the first season of the Super 12, but were well beaten by the Sharks at Ballymore in the semi-final, then they did it again in 1999, a last hurrah before losing to the Crusaders in Brisbane 28-22. That result will weigh heavily on their collective conscience this week, but they should be good enough to come through.

History suggests that a strong Reds translates into a strong Wallaby line-up. The Reds may have tripped up in 1999, but the Wallabies won the World Cup that year. Equally, in 2007 the Bulls won the first of their three Super Rugby titles and provided the core of the Springbok team that went on to win the World Cup in Europe.

The difference, then as now, was the diversity of provincial backgrounds in the winning side. The Wallaby selectors and, to an extent, the All Black selectors, have a choice to make. Do they base their World Cup sides on the Reds and the Crusaders, clearly the best teams on either side of the Tasman Sea, or do they mix and match, aware that the game time endured by key players is already excessive?

The Springbok selectors, on the other hand, have a larger gene pool to swim in. They have cast their net wide in the first squads of the season and few can carp about the quality at their disposal.

The Stormers may have imploded last week, but they have been consistently the best South African side on display. The Sharks played well in patches and the Bulls remarkably well once they had entered the doors of the last-chance saloon. The Cheetahs won friends and influenced people with their mid-season renaissance, which featured a great win over the Crusaders. Which brings us back to the Lions.

It is too late now to note the small margins by which John Mitchell’s team lost key games in the early part of the season. It is enough to hope that the careers of two potential superstars — Jantjies and Jaco Taute — have not been irreparably damaged by the need to play as seasoned veterans rather than frisky yearlings because of the paucity of back-up in the squad.