Pumas keep focus after ‘wake-up call’

AN UNWANTED by-product of compiling an unbeaten record is that preserving the streak can become almost as important as winning itself.

Usually a team’s motivation when playing games is to win, but when they have a 100% win record like the iCollege Pumas did at the end of the SuperSport Rugby Challenge pool stages this past weekend, there can be a tendency to protect the winning run as much as trying to win matches.

Watching the Pumas trail the Hino Valke 22-7 at around the half-hour mark in their final round-robin match at the Bill Jardine Stadium on Sunday – a “crisis” solved by their winning 58-29 and going into the playoffs unbeaten – one couldn’t help but wonder if they’d gone into that encounter expecting Rudy Joubert’s charges to roll over.

Pumas coach Brent Janse van Rensburg was only partially convinced: “When you win consistently the complacency factor is a problem and the players think they can just do whatever they want and they’ll still win the game.”

Janse van Rensburg said if anything, he felt his charges, whose winning streak amassed 39 of a possible 40 points from their eight games in the group stages to finish top of the overall log from the three pools, had done well to keep their minds on the job at hand.

“But I think we’ve done well by keeping our feet on the ground, we also want to get better every week. Our main focus is how can we get better and constantly improve our game as well.

“We keep challenging each other, so it was important for us to get a good game today so that we can take the momentum into the playoffs and to win because the benefit of winning is you get confidence. That feeling of winning injects energy into the squad.”

Janse van Rensburg was more interested in pointing out what went wrong technically in the initial stages of the game: “We respected the Valke going into this game because they put the Bulls and the Lions under pressure in their previous two games. Our heads weren’t in it in the first 2030 minutes – we didn’t play or execute well, we were just playing a different game.

“It was a bit of a wake-up call but I had faith in the players, I knew we could chip it back as long as we became more accurate and everyone played within our system. We just needed to get more spacing and linespeed in defence. As soon as we started doing that they made mistakes and we got turnover ball and they couldn’t get the ball wide.”

The Pumas’ reward – if that’s the right word – is a home quarterfinal against the Vodacom Blue Bulls, who in losing 47-29 secured one of the two third-place qualifiers for the playoffs. Ordinarily the task would be daunting for the Pumas, but having beaten the Bulls twice in the group stages, it is David Manuel’s team who will be hoping it is third time lucky when they meet at Mbombela Stadium.

“I hope it’s third time lucky,” said Manuel. “We’ve tried to be proactive by getting an extended squad going into this game because the Bulls are going to Singapore for their game against the Sunwolves, so our team will be affected by who they take with them.

“So we have to deal with all those external factors and make sure we choose the right players and go to Mbombela with the right game plan. Then the players must have the discipline to apply that gameplan for 80 minutes, otherwise that third time lucky is not going to happen for us.” —