Time for a rethink about 2007

The Southern Spears completed a sequence of four pre-season matches when they were hammered 73-5 by the Stormers in Wellington this past weekend.

Of those four matches, they won just one, with a fairly comfortable victory being recorded against Eastern Province on a wet Port Elizabeth afternoon on the ridiculously early date (for a rugby match) of 7 January.

For the rest, it makes pretty harrowing reading for those who remember that the reason the Spears are in existence at all is because they are due to make their Super 14 debut as the newest South African franchise in 2007.

When they started out a few weeks ago, the promise was that we would see attacking rugby from the Spears, with lots of tries. Against the Cheetahs they did not cross the line once, and against the Stormers they scored just one consolation effort through Spencer Wakeling very late in the game.

Those media people who saw them play the Cats in East London gave an indication that the Spears provided a much improved performance. Yet they were still well beaten, and this on a day when Cats coach Frans Ludeke was reportedly spitting blue murder at his charges for an apparently inept and passionless display.

For that matter, the Stormers were not particularly good in Wellington either. There was a lot of rust in evidence, and it needs to be recalled that though the Stormers team possessed the stars, it was the Spears who should have been more match ready after playing almost unchanged as a unit through the last four weeks.

So it does not look pretty or promising when we come to consider next year and the prospect of one of the current South African Super 14 teams dropping out to accommodate the newcomers. On the evidence of what we have seen, the franchise that finishes fifth out of the local entries in this year’s competition is going to have to be extremely woeful to be weaker than the Spears.

Neither does it really help matters to hear that their coach Pieter de Villiers is reminding everyone that he is building his team over three years. If his team are not to be a laughing stock in next year’s Super 14, they are going to have to build much quicker than that, and a massive improvement will be necessary if they are even to be competitive in the Currie Cup later this year.

For a start, they are going to have to recruit a tight five, for the pack was completely ineffectual against the Cheetahs, who led 33-0 in their match two weeks ago in Port Elizabeth before easing off in the second half. They were not much better against the Stormers, and will have to bring a lot more muscle to their Super 14 matches if they are not be blown off the planet.

Not that this should all be seen as a negative rant about the Spears. The area they represent does hold a lot of potential, provided the administrators can find a way to make it all work, and having a strong team in the region should ignite the interest in the black communities.

But if De Villiers is building for three years time, maybe his team should be given three years to develop before being thrown to the wolves in the Super 14. Twelve months is just too short a time for the Spears to get it together, and embarrassment beckons for them and South African rugby if they are pushed too quickly.

It would be far more intelligent to delay their Super 14 debut until such a time as they have built experience as a playing unit and developed their individual talent through their participation as a team in the Currie Cup.

This is the time to put structures in place to ensure that the vast reservoir of talent in the Border and Eastern Province is properly tapped and nurtured. It should not be a time where they have to worry about the crisis management which may become necessary if next February remains their deadline for Super 14 readiness.