How Griquas didn't fold in third successive SRC final

The storyline that has underpinned the Tafel Lager Griquas side's heartbreaking relationship with the SuperSport Rugby Challenge in the past was last year’s capitulation in the final against the Pumas.

In that final in Oudtshoorn, Griquas led by eight points in the last four minutes and still conspired to lose the game through a converted try and a last-minute drop-goal.

This year, in a repeat decider against the defending champions – their third final in succession – Griquas again found themselves eight points ahead with 12 minutes remaining at the Saldanha Sports Ground on Sunday.

But instead of pulling a Proteas and going back to thinking about last year, they didn't capitulate and saw the game through 28-13.

Their new coach Brent Janse van Rensburg, who was ironically the Pumas' coach last year, revealed how they sought to erase two seasons' worth of failing to get over the line.

"If you keep looking in the rear-view mirror, you can't go forward because it just suffocates your decision-making," Janse van Rensburg explained.

"One of our values as a team is solutions, you're always going to get a flat tyre along the way so you have to focus on finding solutions and fixing the tyre, and I think the players did that.

"If you look at the way they responded, they really did that well and put some points on the board towards the end and closed down the game very well. We did talk about last year in our wash up, we had a lot of game appreciation discussions leading into the competition and we spoke about chasing the game and closing the game down.

"We showed a various video clips of scoreboard pressure and decisions that were made in the past, what decisions could have been made and just made the guys think about it a little bit more. I had confidence in the guys as the game went on that they'd make the right decisions because there was no need to panic because we still had the scoreboard pressure of eight points."

'RUGBY'S ABOUT MORE THAN GAME PLANS'

Having convincingly lost the corresponding fixture in the round robin stages 37-28, Griquas had to come into the final with solutions for what had gone wrong earlier in the season in Nelspruit: "We know their lineout gives them life and they try to get the maul moving and we expected them to kick contestable kicks.

"But the key thing was if you look at the way the Pumas have conceded tries generally in the first 20 minutes they've only conceded two tries in that time in the whole competition. In that previous game we bled too many tries and we knew that we've scored a large amount of tries in the last 20 minutes.

"Also tactically we tried to minimise the number of lineouts, as you saw there were very few in the game."

The win with Griquas is Janse van Rensburg's second in succession in a young coaching career gathering momentum as one to watch, but good luck trying to get him to wholly embrace the credit that is due to him.

"It's great, it's obviously nice to get the win and nice to see the hard work everybody put in provide an outcome. But for me it's about more than just about rugby, it’s about developing people, making sure they live their lives properly and just be good people – that's more important for me than the wins. Rugby's about more than just the game plan."

Having won a trophy in his first campaign with the team, even his biggest doubters within Griquas structures have to be believers by now: "It breeds confidence in the guys, it brings energy and the better the players' head space the better the mood and the more the skills are unlocked and the better the rugby they play as a result.

"So this is really good for this team from an energy and confidence perspective going into the Currie Cup, we'll certainly feed off it and enjoy it."