Halcyon year

Most of the elements of an amazing Super 14 season ended up being compressed into the helter-skelter final three minutes of the Final between the Sharks and the Bulls in Durban.

It was a tournament of close results (there were nine one-point victories), late rallies to salvage lost causes and outcome-altering decisions by match officials.

And it was all there in the final few seconds of the 7 520 minutes (of actual time) needed to complete the 94 matches which make up one of the toughest sporting contests ever devised by man.

Referee Steve Walsh made the decision to award the Sharks Albert van den Berg’s try, even though there was some doubt as to whether the ball had been properly grounded, but followed this up with a more dubious decision by not penalising the Bulls for transgressing at a ruck during the climactic move that resulted in Bryan Habana’s try.

It was the most amazing ending to a season that time and again tested the bounds of incredulity, finally ending with a victory for the visiting team that mirrored the 20-19 win the Crusaders scored over the Brumbies in Canberra in the 2000 Final after Andrew Mehrtens kicked a controversial late penalty awarded by Andre Watson.

Looking back on so much incident one is yet again amazed by sport’s capacity to outdo fiction.

The year started to the ring of “crouch! touch! pause! engage!” as we were introduced to the new four-stage scrum law and it was immediately apparent that the law-makers had got it wrong.

Initial impressions were that in trying to make the scrum safer the bureaucrats were intent on eradicating it altogether but as the season wore on referees became less punctilious, the count became quicker, and the front rows were by and large allowed to get on with it – to the obvious benefits of two of the best scrummaging sides in the tournament, the Sharks and the Bulls.

A far more serious concern than the scrum, however, was a diktat outlawing rucking which had the immediate effect of making rugby’s most problematic phase of play, the breakdown, even more of a mess as it allowed the negative ball killers to rule the roost.

An interesting aside to the “no boots” directive was the impact it had on the effectiveness of rugby’s vultures, the fetcher flankers scavenging for scraps of possession. Whereas in previous years players such as George Smith and Schalk Burger were regular stand-outs and massively influential it was significant to see how the like of the aforementioned two plus Daniel Braid, Marty Holah, Luke Watson, Daniel Braid, Johnny Leo’o, Phil Waugh, Wikus van Heerden, Jacques Botes, Cobus Grobbelaar, Matt Hodgson and even Richie McCaw struggled to impose themselves.

This may well be a temporary aberration caused by the presence of so many specialist ball hunters but it could also indicate a shift in the way referees are policing the game.

Referees were much to the fore in the tournament; especially their inconsistencies. Eddie Jones had a public and expensive spat with Matt Goddard with the upshot being that there were times the match officials became more important than the players – Phil Kearns encapsulating the general feeling by laconically remarking, “even if the referee is wrong, he’s right.”

The (so-called) spear tackle became a phenomenon not fully understood or consistently refereed while inequitable rulings by judicial tribunals continued to be a blight with players penalised or let off for the same transgressions.

Graham Henry’s decision to rest 22 of his men for the first half of the tournament made waves from the moment it was announced, reached a crescendo when the Crusaders and the Blues were knocked out of the tournament, and continues to resonate in New Zealand where it is feared he may have provided South African rugby with momentum and confidence the All Blacks will pay for in France.

A miraculous year produced not only the highest score in the history of SuperRugby, the Bulls’ 92-3 massacre of the Reds at Loftus in Round 14, but also the lowest, the Brumbies’ 6-3 win over the Reds in Brisbane in Week 3.

A multitude of excellent newcomers appeared on the scene, a spate of personal milestones were reached, with Ollie le Roux and AJ Venter joining the 100 Club, Doug Howlett became the greatest try-scorer and Johan Ackermann the oldest man to score a try in Super Rugby, the Bulls became the first SA side to win three games on tour and the Sharks scored our biggest win “over there” (59-16 vs the Reds), there was new hair and bad hair but most of all there was an all-South African Final and, finally, a South African winner.

It was a year, what a year it was. As Loffie Eloff, in my favourite quote of the tournament, said: “We had them in leaps and bounds!”