Let’s not get carried away

When I saw the headline I nearly choked with surprise: Du Toit to receive Laureus Award. But then once the story was read, and it was confirmed they were talking about the swimmer Natalie du Toit, I was able to settle down.

Yet you wouldn’t put it past hunger starved South Africans to write Gaffie du Toit into some sort of fancy award. Even though he has played just one half-decent game for the Stormers in this year’s Super 12, these days that might well be enough to install him as a world beater.

The sudden optimism sweeping South African rugby is in many senses understandable. It has been three years since three teams from this country won on the same weekend when all the Super 12 matches were against overseas opponents.

But I am disinclined to join those at the Newlands cocktail party on Saturday night who were saying “South African rugby has turned the corner”. Maybe you can call it a case of “Once bitten, twice shy”, for too often in the past I have allowed myself to get caught up in the euphoria that follows an unexpected success.

It has happened in the Super 12 before, it usually happens at least once during every Springbok Tri-Nations campaign, normally after they have scored their one mandatory home victory against Australia.

In fact I even wrote a column about this phenomenon of building our team up into world beaters after one good performance following the victory over Australia in Pretoria in 2001.

The column warned against getting too upbeat about what might prove to be a pyrrhic victory (one that comes at too great cost: in other words duping everyone into believing everything is right when it is not).

Of course, those sentiments were proved correct when the Bok coach Harry Viljoen then got so carried away with the kicking game his team had used to achieve that triumph that it impacted on his selection for the end of year tour of France and England. The 29-9 defeat at Twickenham later that season proved that the win over Australia had been just a false dawn.

It was a similar story last year when the Boks beat George Gregan’s team in Cape Town. I even rushed into cyberspace a column that suggested Bok coach Rudolf Straeuli was after all “a man with a plan”. Ouch! Little did I know that his plans had no place for the match-winner that day, Brent Russell, who had a poor game the following week when the All Blacks put 50 points over a Bok team many South Africans suddenly regarded as favourites.

The Super 12 results so far have exceeded many people’s expectations. There were several critics who felt the Sharks did not have enough forward power to challenge this year, and they were roundly tipped for a last place finish. Those who are based in Stormers country were as negative about their team’s chances.

But I argued in my preview to the season that both teams would be competitive as long as injury stayed away, which up to the setback suffered to Selborne Boome was the case for the Stormers and still is for the Sharks.

It worries me when I read that Kevin Putt, the Sharks coach, has had to warn his players to think of the next game and not think six weeks ahead. What happens six weeks from now? Are they really already contemplating a semi-final. If they are they could come seriously unstuck, because there is no given that you just win all your home games.

The Sharks face both the Crusaders and the Blues, last year’s finalists, during their home run in April and May. Those are two teams that are struggling now but don’t bet against them picking up momentum later on, just in time in fact for when the Stormers, by then perhaps seriously weakened by injury, travel to Christchurch and Auckland.

My point is that there really is far too much rugby to be played in this competition still for us to start getting carried away. Let’s not forget either that the weekend before last not a single South African team won a game, and our rugby was seen to be in a parlous state.

The wildly fluctuating outlook of the South African media and rugby public was perhaps best summed up on the first weekend when our teams played overseas opponents. When the Sharks and Cats were hammered in Australia, everything was doom and gloom.

A radio station asked me if there was any hope at all for South African rugby. Just two hours later everyone was singing a completely different tune after the Stormers had hammered the Highlanders courtesy of a second half purple patch, and the Bulls then went on to beat the Hurricanes.

Yes, three victories in one weekend is a reason to celebrate. But I prefer to take Corne Krige’s view that we should take everything one game at a time and save the euphoria for when a South African team makes the semis.

Be warned though that this may also not necessarily mean glad tidings for the Boks. There were two South African teams in the Super 12 semis in 2001 and none from New Zealand. Yet what happened in the two games the Boks and the All Blacks played against one another that year? And where were the Boks placed on the world rankings when the year came to an end?