Talk about a revolution

Some years ago, in the season that Chester Williams was their coach, the Cats opened their Super campaign by beating the heavily fancied Bulls.

Rassie Erasmus was assisting Williams at the old composite franchise which saw Lions and Cheetahs drawn together in an uneasy marriage, and Brendan Venter was working as the defence coach. The defence had been particularly outstanding against the Bulls, so I rushed off a column lauding the Cats for finally getting it right, for having the right coaches, for sorting out their defensive problems.

That column is still somewhere here in the SuperSport.com archives. If you search for it you should also be able to find the Cats’ record for the rest of that season -- they never won again!

The moral of that story is that I should really know better than to write a column this early in the year based on one match or one performance. Particularly when this time the Lions didn’t even manage to beat the Bulls, who were probably guilty of becoming a bit complacent at half-time and who also only had one half in them because they never had enough hard warm-up games.

But the Lions’ stirring second-half fightback never happened in isolation. They fought back strongly in several games in the Currie Cup last year against top teams.

It also wasn’t just the fightback that was impressive, but the way they did it, with the individual players all being prepared to play a brave style of rugby that in the past, when these same players lacked the skill levels and the team the right level of organisation, would have led to a massacre.

Lions coach John Mitchell, just as his Kiwi friend John Plumtree down at the Sharks also manages to do every year in the under-strength phase of the Currie Cup, clearly knows how to bring out the best in his players. He undeniably knows how to work with his resources and improve the individual players to a point where they are much better players than they were before.

Whether or not the Lions can pick up momentum in the Super Rugby competition and sustain it through to the end remains to be seen. At the time of writing they are two days away from a tough assignment against the Stormers in Cape Town, one which will see them sitting with a two defeats in two starts record if they lose.

But what is encouraging is the emergence of the new young players that have embarked on a steep learning curve since Mitchell’s arrival in Johannesburg. It’s what the Lions can offer South African rugby if they become strong again that has made me a bit of a closet Lions supporter (well not so closet if you consider I have just made it public, but you know what I mean).

This is the last year of Jake White’s Springbok Class of 2004, and the emergence of the Lions and the several really young players who are making an early mark and gaining Super Rugby experience with that team is a cause for optimism for what the Boks will offer after John Smit, Victor Matfield, Fourie du Preez and company are no longer there.

A similar thing is quite unexpectedly happening in the Cape. The ‘unexpected’ part of it is that, unlike the Lions, the Stormers are still dominated by a core of experienced players, and last November you wouldn’t have thought there would be room in a match-day squad for as many as four members of the Western Province under-21 team that so dominated their competition last year.

Found room for them Allister Coetzee has, and he deserves credit for being prepared to back Gary van Aswegen ahead of the more experienced Peter Grant. Of course there is rugby logic to the decision that goes way beyond just wanting to give players exposure, for Grant has just returned from Japan. But some other more conservative Stormers coaches may not have been prepared to make that call.

Flyhalf in particular is suddenly an area where there are youngsters coming through in almost every region to join Patrick Lambie and Elton Jantjes on the bigger stage.

The acid test for all these players will come over the coming five months, and it again needs to be stressed that these are early days, but if a good percentage of them can confirm their potential and succeed in making the step up, this Super season could have positive ramifications for South Africa that extend long into the future.