He touched the money

Long after the final whistle had sounded and the Bulls had completed their victory dance and uncorked the champagne, the ABSA Stadium field remained covered with the shiny shards of whatever it is that gets showered down on the players in these moments.

A good couple of hours after it had all ended, a few lone figures made their away across the darkened field, and the reflection from the lights in the hospitality suites off the debris strewn about gave it all a quite surreal air. It was impossible not to refer to it as the field of dreams, which of course, to the Bulls it was.

For the Sharks though it was the field of broken dreams, and an experienced local hack, forgetting for a moment he was supposed to be neutral, admitted that this was the unhappiest sporting moment of his entire life.

It was hard not to sympathise, just as it was hard not to sympathise with the group of Sharks supporters who sat forlornly in the pub at Durban airport early on Sunday waiting for their flight back to Cape Town.

“If it was a game where we saw the Bulls win 33-3, I might almost have preferred it, at least then we could accept we were outplayed, maybe then we would have had a proper party last night,” said one.

“But it was the way that happened that makes it so hard to accept. When Van den Bergh scored that try, we started celebrating, I can never remember feeling so high. Then just a minute later I plummeted to the opposite emotion. I have never been so high and then so low again in such a short space of time.”

The Sharks’ coaching duo of Dick Muir and John Plumtree should be able to relate to that. When the replacement lock went over for the try that made it 19-13, they hugged each other, thumped the air with elation, and one of them exclaimed: “Can you believe we have won the Super 14”.

You can’t blame them for that. Even though Francois Steyn missed the conversion kick, and rushed it in the process, there was still scarcely a minute and a half left when the game was restarted. The Bulls had seldom looked like scoring in the match, now they needed a converted try to win it.

Just minutes earlier the Bulls had been hammering away at the Sharks, and the big fear up on the terraces was that they would be awarded a penalty, or that Derick Hougaard would drop a goal. That was all that was needed at that stage, and they were nervous anxious moments.

But a try? Nah, it was impossible, the Sharks would be the Super 14 champions. The impression seemed to be confirmed when AJ Venter made a good, comfortable take in winning the kick-off, as he had for much of the afternoon and much of the season. Surely the Sharks would just rumble it up, rumble it up, retain possession.

Butch James kicked that possession away once, but it was a long kick, deep into the Bulls territory, and that was where the game ought to have been played if the Sharks were going to be safe. So nothing wrong with that. There was also still a bit of time on the clock.

It was when Steyn received the ball on his own 22, with now just a couple of seconds left until the hooter, that the brain exploded. Instead of kicking into touch, he kicked downfield. If it had gone into touch, the hooter would have sounded, as it did when Jaco van der Westhuyzen started running it back.

The crowd waited for the Bulls to make a mistake. That would confirm their status as champions. Surely it would happen. But it didn’t. The Bulls just continued to roll their way up field, through one phase, through a second, through a third, through a fourth… Suddenly they were just metres away from the line, Bryan Habana had the ball…and the Sharks defence, so good for most of the afternoon, just opened up, almost as if the Biblical figure Moses was there, and the Sharks players were the water of the Dead Sea.

Derick Hougaard was never going to miss that kick, the stadium was plunged into a surreal silence, reminiscent of that which greeted the end of a Currie Cup final between Natal and Transvaal in 1993. Yes, that was a day when Natal spat the dummy too, for you will recall Cabous van der Westhuyzen dropping the ball on the corner flag and Uli Schmidt pouncing to give Transvaal victory.

Cabous, good player though he was, has never been able to live that moment down, just as Theo van Rensburg will forever be associated with his role in opposition colours in two Natal Currie Cup final victories – the first when he missed a tackle on Tony Watson at Loftus in 1990, and the second when missing a kickable penalty at the death when playing for Transvaal two years later.

Is Steyn going to fall into the same category? Hopefully not, for he is only 19, and has oodles of talent. If there was blame, it should be on those who entrusted him with the conversion instead of opting for the more experienced Butch James.

And the senior Sharks players will probably remind the young player later that the blame for defeat should rest on the collective, for the Sharks should have been out of sight at half-time. Silly mistakes, particularly around the set-pieces, kept them back, and prevented them from exerting the continuous pressure on the Bulls that was necessary.

Steyn though will have his chance to redeem himself, just as Bryan Habana did in scoring the winning try less than two years after being yellow carded at a crucial stage of the 2005 Currie Cup final. It is important to remember that the Bulls have experienced their disappointments too, with Meyer Bosman’s winning try at Loftus that day being the most recent. Hopefully Steyn’s redemption will come at the World Cup later this year. For coach Muir though, he has another 12 months to wait, and he probably knows that he may never come this close again. On Saturday, as the saying goes, he touched the money – and then it was gone. It made defeat so much harder to accept.