Think again about travel policy

Okay, so there goes the theme of my previous column, leaving a whole lot of Easter egg all over my face.

Maybe one day a South African team will go overseas in the Super 14 and win all four or five matches. But it won’t be happening this year. That dream was ended just seven days after the members of the top two South African teams, the Bulls and the Stormers, opened the overseas leg with the Bulls playing the Western Force in Perth.

The Bulls managed to scrape home in Perth, but the Stormers were made to pay for their lethargy and their continued inability to come out on the right side of Stuart Dickinson’s whistle when they visited the same venue six days later.

Then on Easter Saturday came the big implosion, with the previously unbeaten Bulls getting smashed by the Blues. I had predicted a Bulls defeat in my preview to the weekend’s fixtures – but by less than five points.

Where does it leave the Bulls? If they react to the lessons drummed out at Eden Park, it need not be a train-smash. There were concerns during the home leg that they were picking up bad habits at Loftus, and in this match it came back to bite them you know where. The Bulls need to tighten up, they need to fix that creaky defence, and perhaps they should be mindful that often when you take a greater attacking mindset on board it is the defence that ends up suffering first.

Before we get too carried away, however, and start penning the Bulls' epitaph, let’s be mindful they did have a similar experience last year. When the Bulls were bossed physically at the breakdowns in Auckland, it brought to mind their last defeat to the Highlanders.

The Bulls were humbled on that occasion, and yet they came back to not only win the competition, but win it in style. Even good teams have to lose sometime.

The Stormers have lost two matches this season and both of them were given away in the last few minutes, both to Australian teams who played better than them on the night. The loss in Perth though was a shock because it was as if the Stormers just never pitched up. They looked flat, jaded, lethargic...there is a whole list of adjectives that can be used which ultimately mean the same thing.

Most critics predicted a 10 point or more win for the Stormers, but in retrospect we should have seen what happened on Friday coming for it felt like a movie we had seen before. It was certainly not the first time that Perth was an unexpected hiccup for a high flying South African team.

Three seasons ago the Sharks went there after an impressive home run and got beaten 22-12. The only Sharks defeat at home before they had travelled had also been to the Brumbies, which may be a good omen for the Stormers as that season the Sharks went on to host the final.

So maybe what happened to the Stormers and Bulls is just something that happens to every team at some stage when they are playing in a long competition like the Super 14. For the Stormers it was also a case of the bye fortnight cobwebs.

What was worrying though about the Stormers and Bulls in their Perth matches was the evidence of travel fatigue in aspects of their game. I wrote in my previous column that opening in Perth is an advantage, but maybe it isn’t if you only fly out three days before kick-off.

The Boks excelled in their Perth match in last year’s Tri-Nations after flying out just three days before. But when they did a similar thing for the match against France in Toulouse later in the year it appeared to backfire.

It may only be a nine hour flight from Johannesburg to Perth, but it is 14 from Cape Town if you take the Johannesburg stop-over into account. Most importantly, there are quite a few time zones that are crossed along the way and regardless of how many sleeping pills you take, waking up in sunshine on the other side of the ocean when it is still night back home is always disorientating.

The Bulls played the Hurricanes the week before they flew out, but the Stormers had a bye fortnight, and could have arrived at their opening tour match much better acclimatised than they were.