What sparked fall of the mighty

It was just four weeks ago, but in terms of where Western Province were then and where they are now it might just have been another life-time.

It was the buildup to the match against Griquas in Kimberley and some of the WP players were discussing their prospects for the rest of the Currie Cup. While it was generally agreed that they were not playing well despite their easy wins over the likes of Border and Boland Cavaliers, it was felt that the side packed awesome potential.

"Some team is going to get it, and when it happens and we click, they are going to get it bad," seemed the hidden message behind the talk.

Now it is the start of October and it will take a miracle of Houdini proportions just for Province to survive into the semi-finals.

So where did it all go wrong? It is tempting to dredge up that hoary old reference to cycles. You know the one: Every team has its cycles, the pendulum turns etc.

As WP provide more members of the Springbok team than any other province, I don't buy this theory. WP may not win the Currie Cup this year, but it would be premature to suggest their latest golden era is at an end.

So if it was not cycles, what was it? There is another theory, and members of the Bok management buy into this one, that the landscape of South African rugby is changing. Skill and excellence is no longer the exclusive preserve of the Cape - perhaps partially because some of the most skilled Cape youngsters, such as Brent Russell, Adi Jacobs and Derrick Hougaard, were exported to the north.

Selection is always something to be considered when it comes to uncovering the reason for a team's failure. To be sure, there were things that Gert Smal did this winter that I have not agreed with.

The refusal to play Springbok fullback incumbent Werner Greeff in that position topped the list. But Greeff might have been even better employed at flyhalf, where Chris Rossouw has battled to exert any authority.

Smal said in a recent radio interview that a backline combination of Greeff at flyhalf, Robbie Fleck at inside centre and Marius Joubert at outside centre was what he was working towards. Substitute Joubert, who was injured, with Gus Theron and you have the lineup I would have selected for Loftus.

But it would be a gross exaggeration to suggest WP lost their way because of how the coach configured the backline.

Maybe the secret to the WP demise since that conversation in Kimberley lies in the fact that several of those who were part of it are now out injured.

If the past few weeks have proved anything, it is that there is no bottomless well of talent from which the WP coach can draw his resources.

Smal has refused to make excuses, but it is a bit much to expect a team to win the Currie Cup when it has lost nine frontline players to injury.

And if you really think about it, it is not just the injured guys that have been lost. Don't let anyone tell you that Pieter Rossouw is not being missed. Robbie Kempson, now in Ireland, used to pack the mongrel in the front row which WP currently lack.

Ah, mention of that last name gets us closer to the real reason why WP have tripped over their feet this season. For while injuries have played a major role in WP's slide, the injuries in question are not the ones which immediately spring to mind.

The fetching of Corne Krige and Hendrik Gerber was undeniably missed, but I doubt that even they would have made a difference playing behind the current WP tight five.

Sharks flanker Warren Britz expressed it perfectly last week - a loose-forward is only as good as his tight five. When it comes to WP, the tight five, or more specifically the front-row, has been woeful.

In retrospect, Kimberley might have been where it all started going wrong for Province. It was there that the injury to Springbok Faan Rautenbach was confirmed. The broken cheekbone suffered by Gerber later in the same trip only rubbed further salt into an already gaping wound.

Rautenbach's injury followed an equally serious long-term one to WP's other Bok tighthead, Cobus Visagie. In a year when WP had lost Kempson and experienced hooker Charl Marais to overseas and Toks van der Linde to retirement, the loss of both tightheads was a mortal blow.

It is not Morne van der Merwe's fault he has battled in their absence. He is essentially a loosehead and with Rautenbach and Visagie ahead of him, he would never have dreamed at the start of the season that he would be campaigning as the WP first choice tighthead by the end of it.

Such a makeshift arrangement has had dire consequences for WP, and a look back at all the great Currie Cup winning teams of the last 20 years suggests that we should have expected it to be so.

Name the team and their years of dominance and one thing will strike you - they all had great front-rows. Let's start with the Blue Bulls of the late 1980s. Hah, the names Jan Lock, Heinrich Rodgers immediately come to mind.

They are just one example. There are several more. Natal would never have won their first Currie Cup in 1990 were it not for the massive contributions of Guy Kebble and Tom Lawton.

The WP dream team of the mid-1980s had some great backs, but it was Hempies du Toit, Shaun Povey/Robert Cockrell and Henning van Aswegan who laid the platform.

More recently, the winning WP team of the past two years had Kempson, Marais and Visagie.

These men did not just take on the responsibility of holding up the scrum and ensuring the backs of "go-forward" ball, they also fronted up to the intimidatory tactics of the opposition and ensured that fire was matched with fire.

When the time arrives to look back at this season from the vantage point of history, how many people will remember the names of the current front-row?

Probably not many. And therein may lie the single most important reason WP's graph this season has spiralled in a downward direction.