The story lying behind the statistics

Statistics may not lie, but sometimes you have to dig around them a bit to establish the full story.

When Springbok coach Rudolf Straeuli said this week that the local Super 12 teams had made an improvement on the performances of last year, it was a fact. In 2002 the South African teams managed just 10 wins in all the matches. Already this year there have been 12 wins and there are still two rounds to play.

As I wrote in my weekly Super 12 review at the end of round nine, it is also undeniable that the South African teams as a whole have been more competitive.

The Cats may be struggling now, but less than two months ago they were good enough to beat two of the top teams in the competition, the Brumbies and the Highlanders.

The Bulls, so often the whipping boys of the competition, continued a dramatic improvement by beating the champions, Crusaders in Pretoria, and the Sharks have on successive weeks pushed both the Crusaders and the Blues on their home turf.

The Stormers have had an horrific run with injuries and Straeuli is right to say that it is understandable that Gert Smal has had a difficult time of it as coach. The list of players read out by Straeuli who have been out and who were pivotal to the Stormers cause at the start of the season was not complete - he omitted Chris Rossouw, who started as both the first choice flyhalf and the ace goalkicker.

All things considered, the Stormers can probably feel happy with a haul of four wins in nine matches - if you consider the injuries, it is far superior to the no wins and one win recorded by some other South African teams when they have battled in recent seasons.

But while all this indicates that South Africa has made a step forward in Super 12 since 2002, the statistics fail to tell the full story in that they neglect to mention what happened before 2002.

Yes, it is great to have four teams that on a given day can beat the best and who are not complete push-overs in every game they play, but if you look at South Africa's Super 12 history as a whole, then it can hardly be argued that we have moved forward.

Straeuli should know this better than anyone for he was coach of a Sharks team that just 24 months ago was marching to a place in the Super 12 final, where they lost to the Brumbies. That same year the Cats also made it into the play-offs, giving South Africa two out of the four semifinalists. And the Stormers, who won five matches, were still in contention until the final weekend.

The year before that the Stormers finished fifth, just one point behind the fourth placed Cats, and in 1999 the Stormers finished second on the log and qualified for the first ever South African home semi-final. It was only injuries that year which prevented the Sharks from making it into the top four too.

If we go back earlier than 1999, then we will discover that South Africa also had a much better success rate at getting teams into the top four than they have had in the past two years. Both Natal and Northern Transvaal made it in that first year in 1996, while Natal qualified easily in both of the next two.

You look at all this and you get a new perspective on Straeuli's statement at the press conference this week that, in reference to the improvement on last year, "It may be a small victory but you have to crawl before you can walk, let alone run".

Those of us who remember 2001, and it was not that long ago, will recall a time when we could not only run, but were on the verge of breaking into a full-out sprint. Even in the bad years you could probably say that in comparison to today's objective of learning to crawl, we were jogging along at a nice pace.

I think it was Stormers MD Rob Wagner who said earlier this year that South Africa should make up its mind whether it wants to build two super teams so they can have a chance of winning the competition, or whether it wants four mediocre teams who will compete but won't come close to silverware.

Ironically, the Stormers have ended up benefitting from the draft as much as any other team this season, but the point remains a valid one given that it was the way they were able to retain depth and utilise it in a squad system that brought the Crusaders success last year.

The point is that you can only really expect the paying public to continue supporting the game if you have teams in contention for the top prize. The Sharks and the Stormers, the two top franchises when it comes to bums on seats, have had lean seasons with regards to attendance, yet in neither case can you really argue that they were less than competitive.

I was in Durban when they beat the Brumbies in their first home match. There were no more than 25 000 people present and it was not that much better when they played the Waratahs the following week. The Stormers have only just lost less than half of the games they have played, yet interest at Newlands seems to be at an all time low.

Yes, I can hear the dissenting voices from the north. People who are charging, as one email writer did earlier this year, that we are wrong to say the Super 12 teams are failing as the Bulls are doing really well also need to put things into perspective.

The Bulls, compared to where they were, are doing well. But I hesitate to call them a successful team. It is a fact that before their last two victories, they had lost every game since the first week of March. Included in the defeats were two 50 pointers - one away to the Brumbies in Canberra and the other in Pretoria to the Blues just two weeks ago.

Sorry, but to me that record should only fit the profile of a winner if you are really used to losing.

But the point Straeuli was emphasising when he made the above statements was the right one. Indeed, it is backed up by the history that preceded last year's pathetic 10 win showing by our South African teams.

Straeuli is determined to get South Africa on track in the Super 12 by placing a strong emphasis on continuity, which is precisely what halted any momemtum picked up by even relatively successful teams in previous years.

His own Sharks team were a case in point. In 2001 the Durbanites appeared to be at the start of a golden era, but then less than a year later their coach left to coach the Springboks and longstanding captain Mark Andrews joined the exodus to the north. The Cats, who were building up to it under Laurie Mains, also lost their coach, plus some influential players.

It may not be a coincidence that the best performing South African team historically has been the Sharks. That is because in the years when they attained their success (relative success, I may add) they were one of the most settled teams around and drew on a core of experienced players.

Teichmann, Joubert, Putt, Honiball, Thomson, Le Roux, Andrews - you could draw up a team list from any time between 1996 and 1999 and all those guys would have been there.

Straeuli, borrowing from old Moscow like so many do, speaks of a three year plan. Rudy Joubert, Gert Smal, Tim Lane and Kevin Putt will, come hell or high water, all still be coaching their respective Super 12 franchise in two years time.

That is a massive step in the right direction, as is Straeuli's intention to keep as many players as possible in the same region next year that they are now. My hunch is that he may be correct that the current young Cats team will develop in time into an awesome unit if it remains together, the Sharks appear to have turned the corner and the Bulls, who will be playing under the same Super 12 coach for the first time in many seasons next year, should continue to grow.

South Africa's performances may have improved in 2003, but only if you compare them to when we hit our nadir last year. If Straeuli is allowed to follow his plan through, South Africa need not hit such a low again.