Time for Bulls, Stormers to soar

If anyone was wondering whether Stormers coach Allister Coetzee had any interest in the Comrades Marathon, the answer was provided at a press conference after the recent match against the Cheetahs.

“We are just starting on Polly Shortts! We are running from Durban to Pietermaritzburg!” said Coetzee.

Unless he was departing completely from his usual script of taking it one game at a time and not looking too far ahead, Coetzee could not have meant that. Polly Shortts is the hill on the up Comrades that hits tired runners eight kilometres from the finish of the 87 km epic. It is a challenging hill to run up, make no mistake, but the point is that it is tough because it comes so late in the race.

If the Stormers think they are at the Polly Shortts of the Super 14 then they are going to blow when they reach the real Polly Shortts, which for them should be the tough last trio of matches against the Crusaders (Newlands), Sharks (Durban) and Bulls (Newlands).

They have played six games out of the 13 scheduled for the league phase, and as they are about to start their tour, Coetzee is right when he says there is a tough hill in front of them. Only it is Inchanga, the seven kilometre haul out of the halfway point at Drummond, and not Polly Shortts, that confronts their immediate future.

Inchanga is the real moment of truth for runners on the up Comrades, and it will be so for both the two South African teams currently at the top of the Super 14 log. If they sail through the tour and get a good haul of victories and log points, then the hectic last few games (the Bulls also have to face the Crusaders and Sharks near the end) won’t be quite as taxing as Polly Shortts.

Coetzee says his team will be aiming for a minimum of two wins out of their four on the road, but he should be hoping for better than that. And so should the Bulls. This is the time they should be breaking the back of the challenge, and not waiting for the last match where there is the potential for them to cancel each other out in a bruising derby just one week before the semi-finals.

If you consider how South African teams have struggled over the years, it might seem far-fetched and overly ambitious to say they should be looking to book home semi-finals before the arrival of the last league game. Yet it is possible if you look at the draw that both teams face this year and take into consideration the compelling form they have been in at home.

The Stormers have already suffered the setback of having Joe Pietersen and Wicus Blaauw ruled out of the tour with injury, but there is every reason for them to be looking for a full house. Even more so the Bulls, who travel with a core of experienced players who have been part of two Springbok wins against the All Blacks on New Zealand soil over the past 18 months.

If the Sharks are just busy completing the tour from Hell, then the Stormers have the opposite. Like the Bulls, they will only have three weeks separating their first game from their last, and they do not have to travel to New Zealand, or even the eastern states of Australia, right away.

Instead they stop in Perth for their first game, just eight hours from Johannesburg, before continuing to New Zealand the following week. That makes it so much easier. The Western Force have struggled this year whereas the Chiefs, Blues and Reds have all had their moments, but all four games the Stormers and Bulls play are possible wins – and should be regarded as such.

Is that pie in the sky? I don’t think so. The last time the Stormers played these opponents and had four matches overseas was in 2008, and they won three of them, with the Blues game only being lost on a disputed injury time penalty.

But anyway, even if the tour was a little tougher, isn’t it time that the South African high flyers put the overseas bogey to bed forever? With experienced, world class players who have built up enough of a winning habit to be able to win anywhere, it is time for one or both of the local teams to soar to new heights by creating history by completing a first South African clean sweep in the Antipodes.