What an interesting Friday and Saturday it turned out to be — starting off the Super 14 with some peculiar results on the table, which will count for a lot in 10 weeks’ time when the top teams angle for a quarter-final.
Let’s digress for a moment: There was the upset last night in San Diego of the Springbok Sevens by England and New Zealand by Kenya. You got to love the spunkiness of the Kenyans who are getting bolder and stronger. They beat South Africa last week and New Zealand last night to finally have the Argentinians win the Sevens Tournament in San Diego. Great for rugby.
Back to the 2009 Super 14. More and more emphasis will be on tries scored, on getting 4 tries for the bonus point and on the key pivots, scrum-halfs and fly-halfs and how they dictate the game.
There is the school of thought that one must analyse the opposing team as well as your own with endless hours of video analysis and stats to work out where to kick the ball, tackles, territory and possession etc so much so, that this analysis leads to paralysis, especially when raw instinct and skill wins the day.
Look at how Rory Kockott turned the game for the Sharks with his snap tap-penalties and sniping runs and kicks in the second half. He really should have been awarded the man of the match award for ripping apart the Stormers in the last 40 minutes. I came away from the game appreciating Jean de Villiers’ leadership qualities on the field and his ability to flatten Ryan Kankowski in a surgical strike of a try-saving tackle.
Similarly it was the Lions fly-half duo of Andre Pretorius and Earl Rose who turned the game for the Lions away from the Cheetahs. can they do it again, this time against Ruan Pienaar.
Five of the seven winning sides (the Bulls, Blues, Lions, Waratahs and Brumbies) scored 4 or more tries to secure the maximum 5 points each. A Full House.
Not in this bunch, are the Sharks (4), Crusaders (4) or Highlanders (2).
When did a Super-14 side score 5 tries and lose the match? The Highlanders scored 5 tries in going down to the Brumbies.
This time last year it was only the Crusaders and the Blues with 5 points each, at a Full House, yet the Crusaders went on to beat the Waratahs by 9 points after 14 weeks. The Sharks were 10 points off this, in the semi-final.
So this coming Friday and Saturday the Hurricanes, Stormers, Chiefs, Cheetahs and Force start 4 points in arrears and the Reds have a mountain to climb with zero points. And this after only 8% of the competition behind us.
The Cheetahs have started their overseas tour and begin it with a gain in Perth against the Force. They lost every single one of their away games last year, including in South Africa, so they need to kill that jinx quickly. I have always rated the Force and they have impressed and performed better than 2 of the so called South African “Super Rugby” sides over the last years and John Mitchell has a point to prove and bonus points to earn against soft targets like the Cheetahs and Lions.
The second round of this weekend’s Super-14 fixtures is going to pile more pressure on the teams and my advice to all would be to hit the 4-try mark or face the prospect of slip sliding away to the bottom of the log.
This comes back to why the experimental law variations were created, to score tries. Quick tap-penalties will rule the day, to gain territorial advantage and especially to spin the ball out wide.
How coaches condone the endless kicking downfield into the hands of the opposition and surrendering valuable possession, which is not tactical touch kicking, is beyond me. You score tries with the ball in hand. The neat kick into the box has made way for the era of aerial warfare that exposes the entire side to deadly counter-attacks. Mind you I was astounded at the Reds Captian who said it was exactly the Bulls aerial assault that disrupted them. Go figure?!
In the second round of the Super 14 last year, only the Crusaders and the Blues were 10 points up, each with a win for home and away.
This time next week we will see if the Bulls, Blues, Lions, Waratahs or Brumbies have accumulated maximum points to keep themselves at the top of the table, each with a Full House.
Conspicuous by their absence of course are the Crusaders and Sharks, and you can rest assured that they have every intention of hitting that 4-try mark to get the bonus points.
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