TALKING POINT: Great competition but just wrong timing

“By the sounds of things John Plumtree didn’t want to make the final?” It was a question asked of me during a rugby function on Monday, and it wasn’t an easy one to answer, for it was probably one of those short-case, bigger picture scenarios for the Hollywoodbets Sharks XV coach.

In the short term, winning the Carling Currie Cup by beating the Fidelity ADT Lions in Saturday’s Johannesburg final would add something to the Sharks’ trophy cabinet and provide a psychological boost ahead of the coming Vodacom United Rugby Championship season.

But mention of the URC cues the much bigger picture and why Plumtree might have had mixed feelings when the Vodacom Bulls’ Johan Goosen long range attempt to win the Loftus semi at the end of normal time fell short. Had that kick landed, the Sharks would have avoided having to play 100 minutes in what was supposed to be a pre-season game.

The Bulls would also not have wanted those extra minutes. Many players were playing just their second games of the season, so 100 minutes was a big ask. I have seen some criticism of the Bulls since Saturday’s game, but people must be careful of reading too much into what happened at Loftus - both teams just looked incredibly tired at the end and it was understandable.

TOUGH OPENING TO URC FOR SA TEAMS

Had they lost, the Sharks would have got themselves what Plumtree referred to as the prize of having next weekend off and this week to start preparations for the URC kick-off against Connacht in Galway on 28 September.

And it would be a meaningful gain as the Galway game will be played just seven days after the domestic final, and the Sharks are scheduled to fly out of Durban for that game on Monday. The Sharks will play three games overseas, so it isn’t a Mickey Mouse tour, and then they return home to play the Glasgow Warriors and Munster.

Those two teams are the previous two winners of the URC, so even though the Sharks will be at home, those aren’t easy games. We are also hearing that the Springboks might go on a camp in the latter part of October ahead of their November tour, so there is also no guarantee that the Sharks will have their Boks back. They definitely won't be on their tour, because it clashes with the end of the Castle Lager Rugby Championship.

Add that fact to the injuries already picked up by the Sharks ahead of the Championship because of the tough end to the Currie Cup season that they are using as a preparation for the URC, plus the potential for more injuries in a final, and you can understand why at the end of my review of the Currie Cup weekend I concluded by saying that the Bulls dodged a bullet.

CRITICISM NOT LIMITED TO COASTAL COACHES

Plumtree and the Stormers coach John Dobson were highly critical of the scheduling of the Currie Cup, and also the decision taken to postpone the first round of local URC derbies so that the domestic final could be prioritised. It was very late notice and Dobson had intricately planned his pre-season to culminate with the URC start against the Bulls.

Now his team will start overseas rather than at home, and with the initial plan being that the final Currie Cup league game would be the last warmup game for the URC as it fell exactly two weeks before the URC kick-off, which was perfect timing, everything was thrown out. While Plumtree’s Sharks will go in with potentially too much rugby behind them, Dobson’s team will start against the Ospreys feeling they might be under-done.

It isn’t just the Sharks and Stormers/Western Province complaining. In my conversations with people who work in rugby, from the top echelons of decision making to the back rooms, there is an unhappiness and a concern that the never-ending nature of the South African season is unsustainable and will catch up with South African rugby.

The concerns were neatly encapsulated in a quote from Bulls president Willem Strauss that appeared in another supersport.com story on Monday: “On the negative side we ( and it seems like the other SA teams as well) will kick off our URC campaign with a long injury list. The impact of playing professional rugby for 12 months of the year will probably only be seen late in the URC and EPRC season.”

BEING A SA URC COACH IS A TOUGH GIG

It will, and the Sharks and the Lions coaches both face a tricky dilemma this week - do they choose their URC players for the final, and thus risk injury and the fatigue element that Strauss may catch up with them in the part of the rugby year that is now the first priority of the URC franchises, or do they go play a team representing the next tier down.

It was in fact effectively an age-group team coached by the head of their age-group rugby, JP Pietersen, who got the Sharks XV, and note the XV because it is there to signify that the Sharks recognise that the Currie Cup is now a development competition, into a position where they were playing for a place in the final.

Plumtree would probably consider playing the younger team and letting his URC players rest and recharge themselves for the start of the competition to be the smart move. But at the same time he appears to recognise the need to “respect the Currie Cup”, as he keeps putting it.

However, he was right with one of his final quotes from his post-match press conference after Loftus - “being a URC coach in South Africa is a tough gig.”

And it is. Not only will the teams that await the arrival of our sides at the start of the URC be at full strength, whereas the South African teams won’t be because of Rugby Championship commitments, they will also all have had the benefits of a proper off-season where they could switch off from the sport.

COMPETITION IS SUITED FOR PURPOSE

Make no mistake, the Currie Cup is suited for purpose as a development competition. They should change the name, perhaps follow the advice of Gert Smal and other former players by putting the trophy in museum, for it is cringeworthy to compare the current domestic competition with what it was, but the second tier competition is playing a huge role in establishing the enviable depth that there is currently in the SA game.

I watched both semifinals and they were both highly watchable. While defence was lacking in the Lions/Cheetahs game, it did showcase some of the new finds in the competition, such as Cheetahs flyhalf Ethan Wentzel and the impressive Lions man of the match, No 8 Jarod Cairns, who was everywhere on the field and excelled on both attack and defence.

Players like those and the ones that profited from the youth selection policy of both the Sharks and WP earlier in the competition have used the Currie Cup as a platform to launch their careers. In some cases the URC teams will profit in the short-term from that, but long term benefits are more certain and what the competition exists for, at least when it comes to the URC franchises.

While New Zealanders have become introspective after the two All Blacks defeats in South Africa, and the post-mortem continues, South African rugby is in rude health and the different layers, with the Currie Cup playing a crucial part, contribute to that.

However, now that our professional rugby is aligned to the northern hemisphere, South African rugby needs to fit into the northern time frame, and the months from July through to mid-September need to be regarded as the off-season. That means the participation in or the scheduling of the Rugby Championship should be looked at too, but that is another whole subject to be discussed.

Not that the principle is any different - if the Bok players are going to be in action all year round, with only sporadic breaks rather than the continuous block of eight weeks off the overseas players are afforded, then the 12 month season might ultimately catch up with the Boks at some point too.