Three SA teams could still be in play-offs

When it comes to rugby logs we get accustomed to seeing the same figure dominating in the draws column - usually it is a round zero, with just the odd figure 1 here and there.

Take a look at the Vodacom Super Rugby log as we head into the last week of the league phase of the season and see how different it is to that expectation. The figure 3 appears twice, and so does the figure 2, and in addition to that the figure 1 appears four times.

Okay, so the 3 is a misnomer. In the sense that one of the Crusaders and Highlanders’ draws did not happen. Not on the field anyway. The one game they played against each other was cancelled because of the horrific terrorist attack in Christchurch and the game was entered into the record books as a draw.

But the others all did happen and maybe it’s time for the Superbru fundis to start factoring a draw in as one of their options when they look at their weekend predictions. Unlikely though it may seem for lightening to keep striking in the same place, when something starts becoming a trend you should start to consider it.

BULLS HAT-TRICK WILL CREATE A GAP

Which brings us to this weekend’s final round, and the possibility of another draw somewhere to throw all the permutations into turmoil. And yes, there is one possible permutation involving a draw that could work in South Africa’s favour. The Vodacom Bulls have bizarrely played two consecutive draws, so who says they can’t make it a hat-trick of draws by drawing with the Emirates Lions in their final league game?

If they did that, and the Rebels lost their last game against the Chiefs, which is quite possible, we will have three South African teams advance into the play-off round - provided of course that the DHL Stormers and Cell C Sharks don’t also draw and thus open the way for the Chiefs!

Of course, for all of those teams entry into the play-offs is a bit of a booby prize. All of the teams will be playing away in the quarterfinal round and there is no record of South African success at that phase of the competition in New Zealand and given the way the Jaguares are playing there isn’t much prospect of a win in Argentina either.

But the fact that at this late stage South Africa could still theoretically have three teams in the final top eight does introduce the topic of how this Super Rugby has really rated for local rugby.

STALEMATES MAY SUM UP SA SEASON

The four draws between local and New Zealand teams may in fact come close to summing up the overall South African performance in 2019. It’s been a bit of a stalemate. It hasn’t been a year where a South African team, or teams, have excelled like in the 2007 World Cup year, when the Bulls and Sharks played in the final, like 2009 and 2010 when the Bulls won the competition, or for that matter the past three years when the Lions made the final.

And the smart money will be on the last two weekends of the season being played without any participation from this country. That sounds like failure, which is the way everyone is perceiving the fact that the Jaguares have now clinched the conference. And on one level it certainly is failure.

Yet it feels closer to a stalemate than abject failure. In the sense that all the teams should feel like they have underperformed, all the teams have had their problems along the way and a few blow-outs, but all teams have also had their moments and remained competitive for play-off places until the final weekend.

RIDICULOUS FORMAT

Okay, so let’s admit that final point only really comes about because of a ridiculous competition format. There is a lot wrong with Super Rugby, and a system that makes it possible for the team that finishes eighth after an extended league season to still win the title lacks integrity.

Imagine if English football worked on such a system. If the Premier League winner was decided on a series of play-off matches, the team that finished eighth, Everton, with their 54 log points from the season, would have had a chance to knock out Manchester City, who accumulated 44 points more than them.

That somehow just wouldn’t wash with soccer fans, so why should it in Super Rugby, where the Crusaders are likely to finish at least 24 points (there are only half the number of Super Rugby game) ahead of the eighth ranked finisher but still stand a chance of being knocked out.

Granted, the team that does that would have to play exceedingly well, but such a result does not reward consistency.

MORE COMPETITIVE AGAINST KIWI TEAMS

But take away the Bulls’ no shows against the Crusaders and the Chiefs and the Hurricanes’ two wins in South Africa in the past two weeks and you’d say that generally the local teams have been more competitive against Kiwi opposition this year. The Sharks were unlucky to be held to a draw by the Crusaders in Christchurch, and the Stormers produced a great performance in drawing with a more full strength Crusaders side in Cape Town two weeks later.

The Bulls will return from a four match tour of Australasia with two draws but also with just one defeat, which is better than the average. For once there wasn’t a team that failed to win in Australasia.

The top two teams in New Zealand, the Crusaders and Hurricanes are ahead of the South African challenge, and the Jaguares have gone clear in the past few weeks. But those three teams stand apart. Otherwise everyone else in the competition appears to be on par.

OF COURSE JAGUARES, ER PUMAS, HAVE DEPTH

Neither should we forget that the Jaguares are effectively an international team. They’ve been lauded for the rotation policy that has kept their players fresh, but at the same time they have depth to do that. We’ve seen how the Stormers have struggled since being afflicted by an injury epidemic and they have more depth than the other South African teams. The Bulls have also been impacted by injuries.

The South African derbies have been particularly brutal this year and the intensity of the log battle has taxed the competing teams both physically and psychologically. How long ago did the players start saying they were already on a knock-out footing? It feels like forever. You need to have a quality team and a lot of luck to win four or five knock-out games in a row, which is what a team like the Stormers was asked to do if they wanted to win the conference.

The Stormers do have a formidable pack when at full strength, but they’ve been far from that in the past two weeks. The Lions have played most of their season without skipper Warren Whiteley, and that of course comes on the top of several off-season departures for overseas. Any team used to having the hard working Franco Mostert in it would struggle after he departs.

Imagine what they might have achieved this year had original captain Lood de Jager been a regular presence - and they have also dropped games that they shouldn’t have. They presented the Jaguares with their Loftus win on a platter and that was the turn-around in the season for the South American side. They haven’t looked back.

SHARKS THE BIGGEST CONCERN

The team that should perhaps draw the most concern, because there aren’t so many mitigating circumstances - they’re missing Beast and Akker van der Merwe but the scrum isn’t their problem - is the one that got hammered by the Jaguares the following week. Five defeats in eight starts at home is a lamentable record and there are so many concerns surrounding the Sharks’ Jekyll and Hyde performances that they are hard to keep track of.

The coach’s blind-spot when it comes to flyhalf/fullback selection has possibly been chronicled enough. Perhaps what hasn’t been discussed enough is the coaching issue that becomes apparent on those days when the Sharks don’t get the physical domination they need to bully opponents into submission.

Their match against the Jaguares on Saturday night followed a familiar theme. We perhaps shouldn’t doubt the Sharks’ effort this time - it did look like they were trying - but when it quickly became apparent that they weren’t going to get the physical ascendancy they needed to make up for their lack of attacking guile or innovation, maybe let’s just refer to it as dynamic coaching, the writing was on the wall.

It wasn’t that the Sharks didn’t get their hands on the ball in Buenos Aires. They did. But the excellent Jaguares’ defence wasn’t the only reason there was such a light years chasm between the teams when it came to how they used the ball when they had it. The Sharks looked bereft of a plan and the most disturbing aspect of their lack of proper attacking shape is that they have several Springboks among their outside backs that are being wasted.

We knew as long ago as March that Stormers coach Robbie Fleck would not be in that role next year. Regardless of what happens in the coastal derby this weekend, Fleck won’t be there when the Stormers start their 2020 Super Rugby campaign. Perhaps it’s time for the Sharks decision makers to decree that it will be Robert du Preez’s last Super Rugby game on South African soil too.

Weekend results

Highlanders 24 Vodacom Bulls 24

Reds 29 Blues 28

Crusaders 66 Rebels 0

Waratahs 24 Brumbies 35

Emirates Lions 17 Hurricanes 37

DHL Stormers 31 Sunwolves 18

Jaguares 34 Cell C Sharks 7