War of the props looms in Newlands showdown
OF the many individual battles dotted all along Newlands in the Stormers’ Super Rugby clash against the Bulls today, one has been fought along parallel lines not usually associated with head-to-head clashes.
Steven Kitshoff versus Trevor Nyakane is hardly the kind of oneon-one that will have many crossing the railway line in Cape Town to witness today, but the one man who’ll be making recording space for it on his PVR is Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer.
To be sure, Bulls coach Frans Ludeke has played his part in making sure that theirs is not an immediate collision course by picking Nyakane, who would have been up against Kitshoff had he been named at tighthead prop, on the bench for the game.
But soon, Kitshoff and Nyakane will find themselves in direct competition for the reserve loosehead spot in Meyer’s World Cup squad, however differently they have made their claims for inclusion.
With the Bok hierarchy favouring the Sharks’ front row of Tendai Mtawarira, Bismarck and Jannie du Plessis, the race is for the second set of front rowers. It is a situation in which Nyakane has an advantage on two counts.
He finished last year as the incumbent second string loosehead prop and he has spent all but 10 minutes of his nine games in this year’s tournament playing at tighthead.
With Coenie Oosthuizen occupying a similar reserve spot for the Boks at tighthead, the return from injury of Frans Malherbe and Marcel van der Merwe, and the emergence of Kitshoff’s teammate Vincent Koch, Nyakane will find his international future is on the left hand side of the scrum.
But he’ll also have the benefit of versatility working in his favour.
Kitshoff is finally delivering the brutish performances expected of him since he first played for the Stormers at 18 when, after his high school coach had said he was the strongest schoolboy he had ever seen, Allister Coetzee had to visit his parents to ask him for their permission to play him in his team’s pre-season friendly.
The catch is that at the beginning of this season, perhaps feeling he might never reach Springbok heights, he signed to join French Top 14 side Bordeaux-Begles at the end of the Super Rugby season, and this at the ripe old age of 23.
To look at them, the two couldn’t be more different. Kitshoff, with his carrot-top and meat and drink style of play comes across as the opposite of Nyakane, whose liking for scoring tries is only outdone by his love for celebrating them with even flashier dance routines.
But a look at their progress and their career and season numbers suggest they are more similar than one might think.
After 54 Super Rugby caps, Kitshoff finally has got a hold on his prodigious talent, while at 52 games Nyakane, 25, has finally conquered his off-field discipline demons – he was once dropped from the Boks for missing flights and video sessions – to deliver consistent performances on both sides of the scrum.
The differences and similarities between the two props provide a backdrop for the battle for SA conference supremacy between their two teams, the Stormers and the Bulls.