Currie Cup needs essential ingredient

Not everyone agrees, but for me the first half of the Absa Currie Cup season has been a revelation.

A revelation not in terms of any misguided assumption that the standard has been particularly high. On the contrary, it has been pretty low at times, although at others, and here you have to give credit where credit is due, it has also been very good.

For me the revelation has been the willingness of some provinces to pay more than just lip-service to their pledge at the start of the competition to use it as a building block for the Super 14 and to entertain the crowds by playing exciting, attacking rugby.

Of course, the Natal Sharks have been the leaders when it comes to the first point. They may well find at the end of the league stage of competition that they will pay for the game they sacrificed to Griquas in Kimberley a couple of weeks ago, when they started with what was essentially a C team.

But to coach Dick Muir this will matter not a jot. He said in early June that the Currie Cup was not about breaking the ten-year drought his province has experienced in the competition, but about building for next year. To him it is more important to introduce new players.

It was far better for him to discover in Kimberley that a few of his fringe players were not up to it rather than discover it, say, at Absa Stadium in the first match of next year’s Super 14. By the end of this competition he will know what areas need to be strengthened, and what areas he can be happy with.

If Muir’s determination to use the next few months to look at all possible options is refreshing, so is his onfield strategy, which empowers the players in key positions to make decisions on the field.

This gives his team more attacking options, and the development of intelligent, quick thinkers can only be good for the game in this country, which for too long has been mired under an over-reliance on structure.

Talk of structure introduces the subject of Western Province, a team that have joined the Sharks in trying to empower players with more decision-making responsibilities.

The aristocrats of South African rugby have struggled for so long now that no-one gave them any hope at the start of the domestic season.

It was assumed they did not have the depth, while for too long the Stormers have played in the Super 14/12 with question marks over their commitment.

This Currie Cup has changed that, and WP make no bones of the fact that they have followed the Sharks lead by giving a chance to young players.

In so doing, they hope to put a cracker under the senior players when they return from international duty next year. As has been shown in Durban, there is nothing like competition for places to introduce a whole new work ethic.

WP made plenty of mistakes against the Lions last weekend, but for 20 minutes just before halftime they played rugby which was reminiscent of the team that won the Currie Cup in 1997.

The important factor to consider here is the age of the players – they are captained by a grizzled veteran in Luke Watson,who is just 22, and the best of the newcomers, No 8 Robbie Diack, is just 20.

I have not worked out the average age of the WP side, but I would figure it must be pretty close to 22.

The Lions team they edged out at Newlands was even younger, with players in that side who have been plucked, according to coach Eugene Eloff, straight from under-19 level.

The pacy Louis Ludik looks a real find, and there are other young players there who, although they are not winning, appear to be thriving on the license they have been given to be adventurous.

And adventure there is aplenty in this year’s competition. Watson has been criticised for not aiming at poles with kickable penalties, but WP have also scored tries, both against the Lions this week and in Brakpan the previous week, by opting to tap or play for the lineout.

It is by playing attacking rugby that skill levels are improved and confidence, which was shown so clearly in WP’s 20-minute purple patch, is built.

Eloff might have been misunderstood when he described the Newlands match as a showcase for South African rugby. What he meant was not that it showed how strong we are, but what we have coming through in terms of youth. And there can be no debate about that.

I have one problem though. Last year, when the Boks returned to the competition, some of the young players who had excelled when the Boks were absent suddenly found that they still had some travelling to do before they could really feel they had arrived.

That is an ingredient that will be missing from this year’s competition. There are over two months between the last Tri-Nations test and the first tour test against Ireland in November.

Surely the Boks need to play some rugby in that time to retain their sharpness, and like New Zealand do in the NPC, they should be introduced gradually according to how much rugby they have played.

Jean de Villiers, for instance, would not have been overplayed by the end of the Tri-Nations, and neither will Bakkies Botha, or for that matter Danie Rossouw.

They should play in the Currie Cup from the second half of September, and their arrival on this stage will be well-timed and provide the essential test that the young newcomers may need before we can say for sure they are ready for Super 14.