Fur will fly in catfight
New-look Lions carry hopes of Currie Cup defence
AWEEK ago, the Lions were preparing for, and later going down to, the Wellington Hurricanes in the Super Rugby final in Wellington. Today they are up against the Pumas in their opening match of this year’s Currie Cup competition.
The scenarios could not be more different.
Last week’s Lions team was packed with nine Springboks, who are now getting ready for the start of the Rugby Championship and won’t play today or for the next few weeks, while the remaining starters from a week ago have all been given this weekend off.
Also, the conditions facing the Golden Lions team at Ellis Park today are vastly different to those they were up against in Wellington.
It’s a new-look Lions team, one being captained by Ross Cronjé and Howard Mnisi, who’ll share the responsibilities of leading the team, including several youngsters looking to make their mark before next year’s Super Rugby campaign.
Here we think of wing Koch Marx, a big, powerful runner, flank Steph de Wit and the men who spent much of the Super Rugby season playing back-up to the seniors, like Jaco van der Walt, Cyle Brink, Ruan Ackermann, Lourens Erasmus and props Corné Fourie and Jacques van Rooyen.
These men will be carrying the Lions’ hopes of defending the title they won last year, except this time around they’ll soldier on without the form, skill and class of the likes of Ruan Combrinck, Warren Whiteley, Jaco Kriel and Malcolm Marx, among others.
While the pain of losing the Super Rugby final will still be fresh in the minds of some of the Lions players, the good news is that the majority of the men running out today didn’t go down in the wet and cold of Wellington last week, so they won’t be carrying too many scars.
For them, today’s match is an opportunity to stake a claim for a starting spot for the rest of the competition and, as scrumhalf Cronjé said this week, they’ll bring a new energy and enthusiasm to the team.
In what should be good conditions at 3pm when the game kicks off, the Lions are likely to have too much firepower for the visiting Pumas, even if they may take a while to get into rhythm.
The Pumas, after copping a hiding from the Sharks last weekend, will be desperate to hit back immediately and will back themselves against their neighbours, but it’s going to take something special if they’re to come out on top.
Meanwhile, the Cheetahs, after starting well against Boland last week, host the Blue Bulls in Bloemfontein today (5.10pm), the visitors also coming off a good first-up win against Western Province.
But, while the home team will be keen to make up for a poor Super Rugby showing in the coming weeks and back themselves at home, the Bulls will be favourites to take the points from this match.
They’re more settled after a decent Super Rugby run and have a few more match-winners in the ranks than the Cheetahs do.
It should be an intriguing match, though, especially with the Cheetahs under some pressure to perform after their rather woeful showing in Super Rugby. JUST as they did in the early seasons of the Premiership, Mamelodi Sundowns defended their league title in style, the Brazilians winning the championship by a massive 10 points ahead of surprise package Silver Stars.
Their success, though, shouldn’t have surprised anyone as Patrice Motsepe had lured that serial champion coach Gordon Igesund.
With Godfrey Sapula defying age and playing like a man possessed, Surprise Moriri in the scoring form he was in in the previous season and Igesund shrewd in planning his approach to the championship race, Sundowns won the league at a canter.
Behind them were Stars, who had a splendid season with former Sundowns striker Simba Marumo leading their charge, Owen da Gama’s team also added the Telkom Knockout title, the newly introduced League Cup, to their lofty second-place finish by hammering Ajax Cape Town 3-0 in the final, Marumo scoring a hat-trick at a sparsely populated Super Stadium in Atteridgeville.
While they were humiliated in the Telkom final, Muhsin Ertugral’s “chickens” returned with a vengeance to capture the Absa Cup title by beating league champions Sundowns 2-0 in the final.
National Under-23 midfielder Clifford Ngobeni had a splendid season and duly awarded the Young Player of the Year gong.
The award that had tongues wagging, though, was that of the golden boot.
Jomo Cosmos’s Zambian striker Christopher Katongo scored 15 goals by the halfway mark of the season, only to leave for Brondy in Denmark.
Yet such was the profligacy of the rest of the league’s strikers that Katongo still finished as the top scorer.
In the promotional play-offs, the Premiership’s 15th-placed side AmaZulu overcame all of Pretoria University, Winners Park and FC AK to hold on to their elite league status.