SA's finest ever league season

The Crusaders will fly for 22 hours to get to their semifinal in Soweto. The Waratahs don’t have quite as far to go, but the two hour domestic flight to Cape Town will stretch their journey to around 18 hours.

If anyone wants to know why the Super 14 is considered the toughest rugby competition in the world, the above should provide an ample answer. In what other rugby competition do you get to play a semifinal on the other side of the world just seven days after the final league match?

That is why the two South African teams have to be seen as favourites to win the play-offs and advance to what would be a dream final between the traditional north/south rivals at the unfamiliar venue of Soweto.

But even if they don’t, for it is still true even in the Super 14, where the dice is loaded so heavily against the travelling team, that anything can happen in a knock-out fixture, it is possible to reflect now South Africa’s finest effort in the league phase of the competition.

Two South African teams finished top of the log in 2007, and went on to play in the final. That though was a season, lest it be forgotten, where the top New Zealand teams were robbed by All Black coach Graham Henry of their international players for much of the competition. And to get into the top two, the Bulls had to beat the Reds by almost 100 points in the final match, whereas this year the Bulls and Stormers have consistently been the top two.

The third and fourth placed South African teams from that year were also not quite as competitive as the Sharks and the Cheetahs were in the second half of the recently completed league season.

By winning seven of their last eight matches, the Sharks showed what could have been done had they started the season with the right template. Had they done so, Naas Botha would not have been far wrong with his early season prediction that this would be the year three South African teams contested for places in the play-offs.

The most encouraging aspect of the Super 14 league season from a South African viewpoint was the success achieved over the nation that will host the next World Cup. Of the 25 matches played against New Zealand teams, the South African teams won 14, lost 10 and drew one.

What makes that even more impressive is the knowledge that this was a season where the fifth South African team, the Lions, just never pitched. So the decent and half-decent local teams achieved a 70% success rate against New Zealand teams, with the Stormers completing a first ever South African clean sweep and the Bulls winning four of their five matches.

The Sharks won three out of five games against Kiwi opposition for a 60% record, and were mightily unfortunate to lose to the Chiefs in Durban in the opening match. Even the Cheetahs, who got bashed around a bit on their tour when injuries exposed their lack of depth, completed a 50% success rate against Kiwi teams with two wins, two losses and one draw.

But while the record against the old enemy is excellent, and certainly a far cry from the days when the SA sides were seen as whipping boys in the competition, the slate against the Aussie sides is not quite so impressive and may give an indication of where the real challenge may come from in the 2011 World Cup.

The Bulls’ win over the Western Force was the only win by a South African team on Australian soil. The Stormers lost three of their four games against Australian teams.

So why the disparity in success against Australia and New Zealand? You could search for a complicated answer, or you could go for the simple one. I will go for the simple one – Australians play intelligent rugby, New Zealanders play dumb rugby.

Well, let’s rephrase that, New Zealanders other than Crusaders play dumb rugby. The Crusaders are the one Kiwi team that over the years has employed a tactical game, and it is probably the reason they have won seven titles. They have properly harnessed the talent they have available to them, which has ensured consistency.

Apart from being clever, the Australians are also starting to front up at forward, with some dramatic improvements to their physicality and all-round tight five play being made since the wake-up call sent their way when England outscrummed them in Marseille at the last World Cup.

Whereas most New Zealand teams appear to just want to back their natural talent, the Australian teams have boasted a better success rate at sussing out and exposing the weaknesses in the opposition. The Brumbies, for instance, got it right when they beat the Stormers in a game where they kicked more than they did in any other match this year.

The Stormers, by the way, finished the league season having conceded just 17 tries over 13 matches. They conceded significantly less than 200 points. I have yet to check the archives to see if that is a first, but it is an amazing achievement and speaks volumes for the Stormers’ defensive game this year.

However, while that is one of several things for South African fans to crow about, the number of tries and points shipped by the Lions is not. Going into the Super 14 without a defensive coach was crazy, and if we are going to accuse New Zealand teams of generally playing dumb rugby, we have to acknowledge that the Johannesburg side was the dumbest in the competition this year.