Beware the bearded ones

As omens go, if you are into that sort of thing, the finishing order of the final overall Super Rugby log was not good for the Stormers as they head into their semifinal against the Crusaders on Saturday.

Only once has a team flown from New Zealand to play in a semifinal in South Africa and been successful. That just happened to be in 1999, when the Stormers finished second and hosted the Highlanders. The Reds finished top of the log that year. So do you see what I mean? The portents aren’t good.

Okay, so you might ask what the relevance is, what possible effect can it have? The answer is that it doesn’t really have any, but that after watching and reporting on this sport for a long time, you do start to notice how history tends to repeat itself in funny ways.

Had we made the point two weeks ago that the Bulls were up against it because they were bidding farewell to several legends of their game, we would also have been scoffed at. Yet I could probably draw up a team of South African legends who bowed out of their careers with their provincial teams in losing finals.

Just off the top of my head, Andre Joubert would be at fullback (his Sharks team lost the 1999 Currie Cup final to the Lions), Helgard Muller would be one of the centres (1997 Cheetahs loss to WP), Henry Honiball at flyhalf (that same 1999 final, though he wasn’t actually on the field), Fourie du Preez at scrumhalf, while Gary Teichmann (1999) and Jannie Breedt (1992 Currie Cup final) would have to fight it out for No 8.

Then you have Victor and Bakkies at lock, and so on. There are many more if you really apply your memory and go even further back.

Wynand Claassen’s last game for Natal was a loss in the 1984 Currie Cup final to WP, though Natal had done well to get there from the B Section. They scored a famous upset in the semifinal the week before, a game that proved the final farewell for Free State legend De Wet Ras.

But now I digress. Francois Louw and Anton van Zyl might be saying farewell to Newlands in this week’s semifinal, but with respect, there won’t be the same emotion attached to that for the Cape faithful as there was for the Pretoria faithful when they said goodbye to their stalwarts, simply because neither of those two Stormers players has been around for as long.

For the Stormers the end of the 2011 Super Rugby campaign is hardly the drawing down of a curtain on an era, like it was for the Bulls. You don’t blood 11 youngsters during the course of a season and then talk about the end of an era.

So if we are going to disregard the potential bad omen blown in by having the Reds and Stormers in first and second place respectively for the first time since 1999, we have to turn to genuine rugby reasons why the history of long-distance failure in a play-off might not be perpetuated this time.

Firstly – and this may not sound like a genuine rugby reason but believe me, it is – while the Crusaders’ long-haul flight west is undeniably an obstacle and a debilitating factor, it isn’t to the same extent as it was for the Sharks when they travelled east last week. When you fly back to South Africa you fly into time, and that makes it an easier direction to travel. It’s as simple as that.

The Crusaders also don’t have to go to altitude, as they had to in their last three away semifinals, all against the Bulls. Plus they are playing at a ground where they are bound to have more supporters than they will ever have at Loftus.

But the biggest concern for the ardent Stormers fan shouldn’t be any of those things, neither should it even be the galvanising effect of the emotion the Crusaders are playing on following the devastating Christchurch earthquake and the constant after-shocks that region is still experiencing.

And no, Sonny Bill, Dan Carter and the greatest rugby player on the planet (well now that Fourie du Preez has lost a bit of form) aren’t the cause of my concern for the Stormers either.

For me the biggest obstacle they face, and the real heart of the Crusaders' success story, comes in the form of all those hirsute fellows that prop up their formidable set-scrum and that in just about everything they do bring a combination of power and technical efficiency that ensures there is seldom any chance the Crusaders will fall down on the basics.

While many of the celebrated stars were missing when the Crusaders won under-strength in Cape Town in May, the "beardies" weren’t, and it was one of the reasons they prevailed. If the Stormers want to still be alive in this competition next week, they need to tame the beards as their first step.