South Africans have shown they can mix it with the best
After 18 rounds of fixtures, the inaugural United Rugby Championship has reached the play-offs. It’s been a great turnaround for the South Africans, with three of our four teams in the knock-out stage.
For the Stormers to have been crowned South African Shield winners and finish second overall is a huge feather in their cap. I’m not overly surprised that they pulled off the outstanding achievement in their first year in the competition. Over here in Cape Town, we knew the squad had both the ability and potential to be top of the pile albeit against very competitive sides in the Bulls and Sharks.
However, before SA Rugby stepped in to manage the union’s off-field operations and financial affairs, there is no doubt that the boardroom battles were affecting the players and coaches. In many ways the two (off-field management and on-field performance) are interlinked.
It’s difficult to be able to operate on the field when there is a lot of nonsense going on off the field and in the boardroom. It puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on the coaching staff and management. Fair play to Stormers head coach John Dobson who has been outstanding. It’s great to see the Stormers have got back to a situation where people are talking about what is happening on the field rather than off it.
‘Dobbo’ has done something pretty special with this Stormers squad and they have forged an inner-belief. That together with increased stability within the organisation has added to them playing a great brand of rugby. They play exciting rugby and boast some real game-breakers and proper athletes – such as Leolin Zas who has scored 10 tries – who can rip a game apart. When I turned out for the Stormers, I played in the same backline as Braam van Straaten, Pieter Rossouw, De Wet Barry, Marius Joubert, Breyton Paulse and Percy Montgomery. The current Stormers backline has a similar feel to it and it’s just an outstanding unit.
When it comes to the playoffs, the Stormers are going to stick to what they are good at – their attacking play. I don’t think they are going to reinvent the wheel but it’s play-off rugby and they will need to assess risk at certain times and the decisions they make will be brought into action. I suspect what has got the Stormers to this stage will be championed when they play Edinburgh in Cape Town. Edinburgh are one of the northern hemisphere teams to have won on South African soil so they will come with some belief that they can upset the odds but the Stormers will stick to what has worked.
The Bulls host the Sharks in the second quarter-final which is unfortunate from a South African perspective. But such is the nature of the beast and at least we know that there will be a South African team in the semi-finals. This Bulls team is formidable at Loftus Versfeld and I think they are going to be very difficult to beat. The biggest thing about the Bulls is that they are quick learners, having gone from 15th to finishing fourth overall.
Jake White and his coaching staff assess what is required to be successful and they are able to pinpoint that quickly which shows in the results. There is no doubt the Sharks are an outstanding unit but they are still finding their feet in terms of the right combinations. The Sharks’ season has been pockmarked
“Sharks are still finding their feet in terms of combinations”
by inconsistency – on any given day they can blast anyone out of the water but on another day there is a sense they might well come unstuck.
Either the Bulls or the Sharks are on a collision course with the table-topping Leinster. This Leinster team is special and they are one of those standout sides when you look back at rugby history. You are going to be hard pressed to beat them but there is no bigger challenge. It’s going to be full metal jacket and the likely semi-final against Leinster in Dublin will no doubt be a titanic struggle for the South African team that reaches the final four. Leinster are relentless and make few mistakes.
The maiden United Rugby Championship has proved a success but when it comes to the strength versus strength argument, it’s a case of having too many seasons in one.
With the South African teams also set to feature in the Champions Cup from next season, I don’t know how squads are going to get through without sacrificing somewhere within the season and prioritising one competition over the other. It’s going to be so difficult to fight on every front. It’s easy to scrap a (R65-million) salary cap but you’ve got to be able to go over that and make it financially sustainable.