Much ado about nothing

The clamour that followed last weekend's final top eight clash at ABSA Stadium should have been predicted when the television cameras targeted in on the teams in the tunnel before they ran onto the field.

Western Province skipper Corne Krige looked relaxed. He even had time for a smile and cheery wave at some official as he led his men out through the tunnel.

The Sharks' mood was markedly different (no pun intended). Their captain Mark Andrews wore a look which suggested that if his wife got in the way of his objective of winning the match he would quite happily inflict some severe injury upon her. There were no smiles, just a mean, focussed look which just might have been enough to scare Mike Tyson.

In such a situation WP were on a hiding to nothing and no wonder they appeared so surprised at the Natal approach. Even the meanest gangster loses his appetite for the fight when he already has what he wants and he no longer has anything to fight over.

WP took umbrage to the Natal approach not because the homeside were any rougher than they normally were, but because the Province players were not hungry and desperate enough to stand up to the pain which has to be endured in order to beat the Sharks.

The only way to stand up to Natal is to match fire with fire. That was never going to happen in a match which meant so little to WP. Indeed, this was a game that Province were always going to be better off losing than winning it.

What I disagree with is the view which has been circulated that this was somehow the fault of the Sarfu decision to rotate the venue of the Currie Cup final according to where the two protagonists last played each other in a decider.

While I wrote in my weekend wrap on Monday that there were elements of farce about the final weekend of the top eight, that criticism was directed mainly at the bonus point system which can sometimes mean a team's fate is decided by a meaningless point conceded by an otherwise dominant team.

The lack of good reasons for WP to go out and play Natal as if their lives depended on it also mitigated against the chances of the Lions claiming a home semi. But the lack of competitive edge from WP was not the fault of the return to the old system of awarding the final to the team that last played away.

For the reality is that WP would have been as certain of a home final had they gone into the Natal game under last year's system, which awarded home ground advantage to the team that finished top of the log. All that WP had to do was ensure that they did not concede four tries to Natal, which is a relatively easy task if you play the negative rugby WP were guilty of for much of the second half in Durban.

No, to my mind this sudden hullabaloo over the system for determining the venue for the final - where were all these people when the story first broke several months ago? - draws on an argument that has a fallacious starting point.

That starting point is the assumption that it is unfair to expect the team that finishes top of the log to risk their hard earned position by travelling away for the final.

I have news for those who take this line - the Currie Cup system, and for that matter that in use in the Super 12, is not fair and has not been for a long time. If it was, the team finishing top would get the trophy and there would be no final.

Think about it. There are eight teams that win through to the extended quarter- final phase. Of those, as many as four go into the sudden-death knock-outs.

Theoretically the 2001 final could still be at Ellis Park between the teams who finished third and fourth after a long league season. How fair is that? Does this help us arrive at SA's best team?

We have the semi-final and finals because they promotes interest in the competition and gives the unions an opportunity to make some much needed money by staging these high profile games. The starting point for Sarfu (now SA Rugby) and the provinces then was not that the system should be fair, but that it should make money.

A glance at the attendance figures of this past Currie Cup season makes it abundantly clear how necessary these games might be. The Natal Rugby Union got awfully excited last week when the WP match drew 31 000 people. A few years ago a match of that importance might well have attracted nearer 50 000.

WP, one of the unions that consistently draws bigger crowds than most, has a top attendance for a Currie Cup match at Newlands this season of just 26 000.

Clearly the watered down 14 team Currie Cup system has hit the coffers of these bigger unions severely. They need a semi-final and a final every now and then to make the books balance.

Natal have hosted the past two seasons. Given the big payday that WP can expect for a final against Natal, I believe it is only fair that the team that won away last year gets a chance to take a sizeable chunk of the cake that the intense rivalry between the two unions has helped generate. It takes two to tango and the crowds would not turn up if the opposition were not worth anything.

My problem with last year's system is the truth in that old saying that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This is one of the big problems with the current Currie Cup system as a whole, but that is another column for another day.

Imagine if Natal or WP developed into a invincible team such as the Transvaal Mean Machine that dominated our provincial cricket competitions in the 1980s.

We would end up with a situation where either Durban or Cape Town would become the permanent venue for the Currie Cup final and that union help maintain its dominance by drawing on the extra money generated each year by that fixture.

At a time when all the provinces are desperate for whatever money they can get I like a system that would have forced WP to travel to Bloemfontein had these teams ended up playing one another in the final. Apart from the cash injection for Free State, the match might have been a lot more interesting.

Ultimately that might be more important than whether it is fair or not.