Pumas winning streak reduced to nought by Griquas’ maiden SRC title

Nothing invalidates a winning streak more than losing it in a final. The Pumas found this out the hard way in their 28-13 SuperSport Rugby Challenge final defeat by Griquas at the Saldanha Sports Ground on Sunday.

Going into the match, Jimmy Stonehouse’s men had last lost a Rugby Challenge game in 2017, compiling an unbeaten run which tied DHL Western Province’s 19 straight wins until they lost to the Toyota Free State XV in the quarterfinals last year.

The Pumas had also had a full house of points in their round robin matches, winning all by bonus point and beating Griquas – the team they snatched last year’s title from with a last-gasp drop-goal – 37-28. Long story short, the estimated 5 000 which gathered at the recently built Saldanha Sports Ground expected a Pumas coronation.

But Griquas clearly had other ideas as they matched the defending champions’ physicality, were clinical in taking their chances and held their discipline better in finally winning a Rugby Challenge title after making all three of the finals in the competition’s young history.

"I don’t think anything went our way," Stonehouse said in beginning the post-mortem. "We struggled in the scrums in the beginning and when we came right I don’t think the ref knew what was going on. But it was a lot of things...

"We couldn’t capitalise on what we wanted to do, we made too many mistakes. We had opportunities – twice in the first half we had chances to score but we didn’t. We had another opportunity in the second half and ill-discipline when the referee overturned a penalty.

"Unfortunately in a final like that it’s costly."

While the winning streak was not a driving factor, Stonehouse admitted it was a disappointment to lose it: "Obviously it’s great to go on winning. But sometimes you lose and you just have to go back and start all over again.

"You can never say losing is a good thing but going into the Currie Cup we can look at the decisions we made and correct that. That’s what we’ve learned from today’s game."

Despite getting to within eight points of Griquas through the second of fullback Devon Williams’ tries in the 68th minute, Stonehouse said they never really entertained thoughts of burgling the game like they did last year, where the Kimberley side led by the same margin with four minutes to go but still lost the game.

"It didn’t really come to our minds because we still had time. But we struggled because there were too many penalties ... I wonder what the penalty count was during the game. You can’t have that ill-discipline and expect to come back into the game."

Thankfully, Stonehouse wasn’t in 'throwing out the baby with the bathwater' mode, choosing to look at the fact that they compiled the winning streak as important in laying the foundation for an ambitious Currie Cup campaign.

"I know they can do it. They’ve got the talent, they’ve got the discipline, we’ve just got to go look at what went wrong today. I felt when certain things didn’t go our way we lost a bit of our composure, we need to get some of that back and get the guys to understand that it’s not always going to go your way right from the start because the Currie Cup is going to be tougher than this."

This year’s Currie Cup carries a fair bit of importance for the Pumas, Stonehouse intimated: "Playing in the semifinals is very important for the Pumas because we want to play in the Pro14. That’s what our goal is, and if you look at what happened here today that’s not a good thing, we just have to go back and correct it."