Soweto experience big help to Province
by Gavin Rich 21 October 2010, 08:08
It is not often a team plays in and loses a major final and then gets a chance to learn from the experience and atone for the defeat just five months later.
By the time next week’s eagerly anticipated Absa Currie Cup decider arrives in Durban, five months will be the amount of time, almost exactly, that would have elapsed for Western Province since they played the Vodacom Super 14 final against the Bulls.
Okay, so make it five months and one day to be precise, for the Super 14 match was played on 29 May and the domestic final will be played on 30 October.
The Stormers disappointed in the Super 14 final, losing 25-17 in a match which in truth they never really got into.
The first quarter was hardly over when they were down 16-3, a string of penalties and a try to Francois Hougaard putting the Bulls out of sight in the big match played at the Orlando Stadium.
Looking back at it now, WP coach Allister Coetzee, who is also in charge of the Stormers, reckons it might not have been a bad thing. He says his players learned things from the Super 14 final that will hold them in good stead when they play the Sharks in Durban next Saturday.
“Most of the players had not played in a final before, so it was a new experience for them, but now they have done that, and the memory will still be fresh,” said Coetzee.
“We know what we did wrong in that game, we made a lot of mistakes, and we know what we have to put right, how we have to approach it, so that we put ourselves in with the best possible chance of winning in Durban.”
Coetzee admitted that as it was the first appearance for the Stormers in a Super 14 final there might have been a sense five months ago that the team had already achieved something, which might have impacted on their hunger to win it.
But the experience had showed his team that after a final, no-one really cares too much that the team that lost came second on the log. What is remembered is that there were two teams in the contest, and one of them ended a winner and the other a loser.
“We definitely went to Soweto to win the Super 14, but there was a point afterwards where you had to think to yourself ‘Was it our goal to make it (the final), or was it our goal to win the competition?’ We’ve been talking about this, and we’ve learnt from that one. So that experience will help us.
“We don’t want to be as nervous as we were then. We conceded 12 points early on to the boot of Morne Steyn and we were always chasing the game after that. It is difficult to chase a game in a final. It could be Patrick Lambie who does it to us this time if we don’t get in and settle quickly.”
Coetzee believes his team has grown in the five months since the final, and hinted that there was a ruthless edge against the Cheetahs in the semifinal last week that indicates that the team has shed the trepidation and tendency towards conservatism that often comes in a play-off match.
“It was quite evident against the Cheetahs that once we got into a strong lead we weren’t prepared to just sit on it, we built on it. We were determined to not just be content to sit on the lead, but to take it further. The side have grown from the Super 14 final,” he said.