The Bolla and Bobo show

Confucius say: He who makes predictions on sports events is bound to make very big fool of himself.

Okay so that’s made up. The great Chinese philosopher did not say that, but I have little doubt that if he had not lived hundreds of years ago but in this sports-mad age of ours he would have.

Take the first round of the Vodacom Super 12, for instance. There I was applying logic to what might happen between the Sharks and the Stormers and the Bulls and the Cats. I should have known better.

Reason dictated that the two teams who had been most disrupted by injuries and who, in addition, were playing away would in all likelihood lose.

But that’s not how it works is it? Whoever said you can apply logic to the outcome of sports contests? What other reason can there be for the fat lady to sing?

So there you have it. One weekend of the Super 12 gone and already the Stormers and the Cats have made me eat my words.

What a weekend it turned out to be for the tournament. That statement I made about home advantage is backed, by the way, by cold statistical fact. More time than not the home team wins. In last year’s first round of six matches only one home team lost – the Stormers going down to the Cats.

This year? Four of the visiting teams won and the Highlanders were denied by the narrowest of margins and the genius of Andrew Mehrtens in Christchurch.

Just thought I’d mention it. Even after all these years I have still not got used to the taste of humble pie!

That said, I was alarmed at the poor standard shown by the South African teams. In terms of skills and technical quality the Blues, the Brumbies, the Crusaders, the Reds, the Highlanders and the Waratahs looked to be way ahead of our teams.

The Durban match was the better of our two and all credit to the Stormers for hanging in and then being able to take their chances when they were presented. The Sharks? They should collectively hang their heads in shame. They are the best-paid, best-organised, best-treated team in South Africa and they simply did not produce.

The level of expertise revealed by the Bulls and the Cats was, in a word, atrocious. That professional rugby players who (should?) do nothing but play the game can be so inept defies belief. If these players were golfers they would not make a single cut and they would earn no money.

In the end the Cats won because they had Gcobani Bobo’s hunger and will to succeed while the Bulls had no-one with these qualities. As a reader on the Messageboard remarked, there are some “over-paid, over-fed and over-hyped” players out there who need to take a long hard look at themselves.

If Bobo was the star of Loftus, Johannes “Bolla” Conradie was the one to set the pulses racing at King’s Park. That pirouetting drop-kick of his to level the scores said something about his latent talent and he is certainly one to watch.

Conradie’s service is quick and accurate, he is razor-sharp on the break and the way he started to take control with neatly weighted chip-kicks to increase the pressure on the Sharks radiated a message that he was having no trouble at all in making the step up to a bigger stage.

He is one to nurture and one trusts that down in Western Province they will call in a certain rather useful scrumhalf called Divan Serfontein, a man of similar build, to help add additional touches such as a longer pass.

There were other rays of light. If the Sharks had a team made up of Craig Davidsons they would win the tournament going away while certificates of commendation could also go to the like of Frikkie Welsh, Adrian Jacobs, Stefan Terblanche, Shaun Sowerby, AJ Venter, Percy Montgomery, Pieter Rossouw, Corné Krige, Hottie Louw and Danie Rossouw… the latter coming on as a replacement in Pretoria and doing enough to make you wonder how Heyneke Meyer can justify not picking him in the starting line-up.

And then there’s the contest within a competition that from a South African perspective is almost more important than the Super 12 itself. I’m talking of flyhalf. To use the parlance of our coaches I did not spot one with his hand up at the weekend.

To judge by Gaffie du Toit’s kicking foot he had shot himself in it, literally and figuratively; Louis Koen did no more than he usually does; and Jaco van der Westhuyzen, while hampered by a pack with about as much cohesion as a newly born calf, did not give the kind of performance that said: “Pick me.”

That leaves Marius Goosen, who had to move from fullback to flyhalf when Werner Greeff was injured and ended up outshining all the genuine No10s. But that does not mean I see him as a Springbok contender… yet. With Herkie Kruger, André Pretorius, the injured Butch James and Chris Rossouw and perhaps a few others still to be added to the mosaic, each Super 12 weekend will continue to represent an audition for the “pop idol” of South African rugby.

Let’s hope we find one who, in a rugby sense, can sing like and angel.