Unpredictability makes this Super 14 absorbing

There were apparently howls of derision in the offices of Supersport Zone when I copped out of predicting the order of finishes in this year’s Super 14, yet after four rounds, that decision has been thoroughly vindicated.

The competition gets to the point where it is over a quarter of the way to being completed this coming weekend, but at this stage it is almost impossible to say who is going to be there at the finish. Whereas the Sharks have started well, and remain the only unbeaten team, most of the rest have had impressive victories mixed up with some real blow-outs.

For instance, it was hard to fathom that the Crusaders team that thumped the Cheetahs this past weekend was in any way related to the patchwork unit we saw get beaten by the Lions at Ellis Park the previous week.

It was a tribute to the coaching of Robbie Deans that they were able to turn it around like they did, for it was noticeable that it was in precisely the areas where they battled last week that they turned it around. The Crusaders spent last week in Cape Town, and as I wrote in my match report, the way their scrum stood up this week means there must be something in that city’s water.

But then if that is true, how do you explain the Stormers’ continued failures. Some would say they expected this, but the Stormers do have too many quality players in their ranks to be footing the log after four matches. Their performance against the Highlanders was shambolic for the first 50 minutes, and if they carry on in this vein, they are going to become the tournament whipping boys like the Bulls used to be.

It is easy to feel sorry for their fellow cellar-dwellars, the Chiefs, however, as here is a team that could easily have won all four games, and yet have lost every one. They were desperately unlucky to lose to the Bulls this past weekend, and to the Stormers the week before that.

This was a team I chose as one of my dark horses for the competition. That seems like a silly prediction now, and yet they could easily be topping the log. So was it such a stupid prediction?

Likewise with my other dark-horse, the Western Force. The Perth based team have still not managed to win in their home city, and yet they were good enough to beat the Bulls at that most intimidating of rugby fortresses, Loftus. Go and figure that one out. They have two wins and two defeats in four games, but it could easily have been four wins in four.

Talking of the Bulls, how many people would have expected them to struggle like they have over the past two weekends at Loftus?

If I copped out of a pre-season prediction, I did not do the same with the weekly predictions which go with the preview to each round. At the moment my record stands at 15 correct predictions in 27 games. That is considerably down on previous years, and yet I notice it is better than the records of many other tipsters in other media, both in South Africa and overseas.

But then, with all the close games, it could easily have been 20 wrong out of 27, or 20 right out of 27.

All of this adds up to one thing – the Super 14 this year is a whole lot less predictable than it has been for a long time, and that makes it more watchable. And the unpredictability may even extend to rugby trends.

In the first three weeks, and in most matches, we saw defences dominate. The try scored off turn-over ball had not disappeared, but it had become extremely rare. But then voila, the Crusaders went out in Bloemfontein went out and completely disproved the theory.

After the first week we thought the Crusaders and Hurricanes would be so disrupted by the absence of their All Blacks that they would not shape in the race for semi-final places. After four rounds though, both are confounding the expectations. The Hurricanes are just hanging in, but they have won their last two games by the narrowest of margins, and with three wins in four starts, should still be in it when their All Blacks return.