Bulls can take SA beyond mediocrity

There was much excitement generated by the final round of the Vodacom Super Rugby regular season but if we look beyond the hubris, South Africans face the stark reality that those who celebrated on Saturday night were celebrating mediocrity.

It has always been understood and accepted by the coaches participating in Super Rugby that winning the conference is the be all and end all if you really want to have a chance of progressing through the play-offs to the trophy itself.

The Cell C Sharks made the final the hard way in 2012 by qualifying in eighth position and then winning a quarterfinal in Brisbane before proceeding to Cape Town to beat the DHL Stormers, who secured top of the log that year, in the semifinal. But the final itself was always going to be a bridge too far for them and so it proved. They were soundly thumped by the Chiefs in Hamilton.

There has long been an argument that there should be a gap between the final league games and the start of the Finals Series, as it is known, so that the games in the quarterfinal round could be fairer and more competitive. But then should they be fairer? The team that finishes top works hard to get there and there is an even stronger argument against a format that gives a team that finishes halfway down the log a chance to still win the competition.

As mentioned last week, it seems particularly crazy if you imagine such a format being adopted in Premier League football. It would have meant Everton would have visited Manchester City for a quarterfinal before confirming their title in the most recent season. The mere thought of that is just ridiculous. So why should it be played that way in Super Rugby, which runs over 18 weeks of league format before getting to this point?

CRUSADERS MAY HAVE DRAWN SHORT STRAW

With the Kiwi teams all hitting form at the right time, the team that might consider itself to have drawn the short straw for the quarterfinal round may well be the top placed Crusaders. Whereas all the other home teams have the advantage of hosting sides that have to travel vast distances and across many time zones, the Crusaders face the Super Rugby side that is quite literally based right next door. The Highlanders.

The Highlanders’ travel is minimal, and if the Crusaders weren’t alert to the dangers that a local derby play-off fixture brings, the Emirates Lions, who they beat in the last two finals, might remind them. The Lions ended up hosting the final but they nearly never made it beyond the quarterfinals in 2017. They hosted the Sharks in their first play-off match and it was only a late pressure penalty from Ruan Combrinck and some dubious refereeing that saw them go through after a tightly contested match.

BULLS CARRY LOCAL HOPES

While the format that allows the mediocre still to be alive in the competition at this point is highly questionable, it is what it is. And that being so, there is a chance for the South African challenge to rise above the mediocrity of a league season where the local teams were also-rans in their own conference behind the Jaguares.

With all due respect to the Sharks, who did well to dig deep and score a good try to win their ‘play-off’ game against the Stormers, the only faintly realistic hope lies with the Vodacom Bulls, who have the pack to bother the Hurricanes in their quarterfinal in Wellington on Saturday.

After falling into the trend for inconsistency that all South African sides were guilty of this year in mid-season, the Bulls are starting to look at the end of the season like the team that started it. Remember how they smashed the Stormers, Lions and Sharks in the early weeks? If you don’t you can just refer to their most recent win, the one that confirmed that the Lions will be missing out on a play-off place for the first time since 2015.

They were well beaten by the Brumbies in Canberra in their second match of their overseas tour but otherwise the Bulls showed great fighting spirit overseas and they have brought that spirit, and renewed confidence, home with them.

TOUGH ASK

Mention of home though brings up the big caveat, and it applies of course as much to the Sharks, who travel to Canberra this week, as it does to them. The Bulls have just returned from New Zealand, and now they have to fly back again. It was already a tall order to expect them to win a play-off game in New Zealand, as is reflected in the history books. To do it so soon after making the trip home just seems like a bridge too far.

The previous South African team to follow this sequence into a play-off game was the Stormers side of 2004. That year the Stormers, coached by Gert Smal, made the semifinals, but the play-off game against the Crusaders came just two weeks after they had ended their Australasian tour. The Stormers were competitive in the first half but were out on their feet in the second.

It should be the same again in Wellington, but the Hurricanes will nonetheless be wary as their pack could be vulnerable to the big Bulls unit.

RG Snyman, Marco van Staden, Duane Vermeulen and the entire Bulls front row are in irrepressible form at the moment, they didn’t lose either of their games when they were in New Zealand. In short, they have reason to be confident. They just need to find a way for confidence to push away the jet lag, which is easier said than done.

NEWLANDS WAS LIKE A CURRIE CUP GAME

Certainly the Hurricanes coaches should have been far more concerned when watching the Bulls annihilate the Lions than the Brumbies coaches should have been if they watched the Stormers/Sharks game in Cape Town. There was some quality to the Pretoria game, but the Newlands game was, as the scoreline for much of the way suggested, just dross.

There were comparisons drawn during the game between this match and one in Durban between the Sharks and the Reds about 15 years ago. The scoreline until the 76th minute - 6-5 to the Stormers - was similar to that.

Both teams were ravaged by injury, the Stormers more so, which was why it wasn’t unfair to suggest it resembled a poor Currie Cup game (okay, with better defence) rather than a Super Rugby game. The Stormers will probably admit that any chance of silverware this year dissipated when they suffered a slew of injuries prior to and during their defeat to the Lions three matches from the end.

Someone in the press box mentioned during the game that the Stormers' performance against the Sharks bore little resemblance to their performances in the draw against the Crusaders and the win over the Highlanders and of course you didn’t need to be a rugby rocket scientist to figure out why that was so.

The following were the names involved in those two games that weren’t involved against the Sharks: Siya Kolisi, Eben Etzebeth, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Damian Willemse, Herschel Jantjies, Sikhumbuzo Notshe, Kobus van Dyk… Within minutes of the start of the Sharks game you had to add Cobus Wiese and then Jaco Coetzee to that list. And of course JD Schickerling, Ruhan Nel, Sergeal Petersen, Juarno Augustus, Salmaan Moerat, SP Marais and others were already on the injured list before that.

There was a chance one or two of those might have returned had the Stormers made it to the play-offs. But not enough, and the Stormers would have had additional players out - in addition to Wiese, who has a knee injury serious enough to put him out of the entire Currie Cup season, and Coetzee, other players who were injured against the Sharks were Johan du Toit, Dillyn Leyds and Josh Stander.

SHARKS AT LEAST HAVE SOME COMBINATIONS STILL STANDING

So the narrative for the Stormers would not have changed had they made it to Canberra: They’d most likely have suffered a big defeat and wondered why they bothered to leave South Africa. That is the likely result for the Sharks too, for they also now have a mounting injury list.

In their case though at least the injuries aren’t quite as disruptive in the sense that most of the combinations that played at Newlands have at least played much of the Super Rugby season and the Sharks didn’t have to dip into SuperSport Challenge or Varsity Cup resources for reinforcement.

All except one person would probably agree that Curwin Bosch should be the starting Sharks flyhalf but Robert du Preez junior has played in all of the games either as a starter or replacement, and although there were injuries in the second row and back row, the combinations that did play were not new to each other either.

The question of course is how much of a toll the Newlands game would have taken on the Sharks? Aphelele Fassi was injured during the game, so was Makazole Mapimpi. Coach Robert du Preez was with his medical staff when the rest of the squad visited the Cape Town chapter of the Sharks’ supporters club on Saturday night, and it looks like the Durbanites could be sending an under-strength team to Canberra.

They already looked out on their feet against the Stormers, where they were helped by a freaky intercept try and the yellow carding of Bongi Mbonambi that forced the Stormers to slow the game down just when they were looking to lift tempo. The Brumbies have shown good form ever since they shocked the Stormers in Cape Town on the Easter Weekend. It’s hard to see the Sharks winning and the narrative of what has been a largely underwhelming season for them changing.

CHIEFS SEND OUT SPOILER ALERT

If there’s potential party spoiler left in the competition it might well be the Chiefs. Their annihilation of the Rebels should have sent out an ominous warning to their future opponents, not least the Jaguares, who host them in their quarterfinal. Who was the last team to beat the Jaguares in Buenos Aires? Answer: The Chiefs.

Let’s not forget either what they did to the Crusaders in Fiji not that long ago…

They too though, like the South African teams, have next to no chance of winning the competition. For even if they do beat the Jaguares, they will then have to fly to New Zealand or Australia for their next game. They are at a disadvantage, and it is right that they are, for they only finished seventh.

Weekend Results

Highlanders 49 Waratahs 12

Rebels 8 Chiefs 59

Jaguares 52 Sunwolves 10

Hurricanes 29 Blues 24

Brumbies 40 Reds 27

DHL Stormers 9 Cell C Sharks 12

Vodacom Bulls 48 Emirates Lions 27

Vodacom Super Rugby Finals Series fixtures:

Crusaders v Highlanders (Christchurch, Friday 9:35am)

Jaguares v Chiefs (Buenos Aires, Saturday 12:05am)

Hurricanes v Vodacom Bulls (Wellington, Saturday 9:45am)

Brumbies v Cell C Sharks (Canberra, Saturday 11:45am)