Building home fortresses will require different approach from SA teams

The Vodacom Bulls win over the Cell C Sharks in a tight Carling Currie Cup final means the main preparation phase for the real deal, meaning entry into European competition, is now behind the South African franchises that will henceforth compete in the PRO16.

Just what impact the Covid pandemic will have on the Rainbow Cup, which is to be the forerunner to entry to the PRO16, is something we will have to wait for time to tell us. The four competing South African franchises will though proceed with their planning and the Franchise Cup, the next stepping stone towards entry to the PRO16, will take place from the end of this month.

The aesthetically unpleasing, territory and first phase approach to the rugby we saw in the Currie Cup, and which has been pilloried by those critics who understand that if ever the sport needed to be sold to the public it is during this time, needs to be seen in the context of what comes next.

TEAMS ADOPTING STYLES TAILORED FOR NORTHERN CONDITIONS

Some coaches have been quite unabashed in admitting that their playing styles have been tailored to prepare for the kind of rugby they will have to play later in the year in Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Italy. That’s a reference to the northern hemisphere weather in the depths of winter and what is required to win games. It normally isn’t pretty, though those who have been watching English Premiership rugby on TV attest that the quality often appears a step up from what we’ve been watching in South Africa since the return to play in the last week of September.

We don’t know yet how much rugby the South African teams will be playing in December and January, when the northern winter is at its worst. When the Toyota Cheetahs and the Southern Kings played in the Guinness PRO14, there was often a couple of weeks break over the Christmas month, with the teams returning to action in January.

What these past months of the return to play here, spanning the Currie Cup and the Vodacom Super Rugby Unlocked competition that preceded it, have told us is that playing rugby in the summer months in South Africa is not without massive challenges.

We saw one of those challenging weather events nearly ruin the final this past weekend. It wasn’t the first time a thunderstorm has interrupted a match in Pretoria, and it happened in Kimberley a few months ago too. Arguably the Sharks’ Unlocked game against the Bulls at Loftus in late October should have been stopped too as that game ended in a particularly severe storm.

Then of course there’s the humidity in Durban, which plays a big part in dictating the strategy heavily accented on contestable kicking that the beaten finalists this past weekend are playing. Those who have attended a Boxing Day cricket test at Kingsmead will tell you just how oppressive the humidity can be in the sub-tropics at that time of year.

It has the effect of covering the ball in sweat which renders it to be like a cake of soap when it comes to handling. To be fair, if the Sharks are going to play home games in December and January, they will have little option but to kick for opposition mistakes. The conditions dictate it.

TWO APPROACHES WILL BE NECESSARY GOING FORWARD

But the PRO16 won’t just be played over the height of summer, and the months of September through to early November and then March to June should provide good conditions where South African teams should be looking take the northern teams out of their comfort zones by imprinting their play with a southern hemisphere approach.

DHL Western Province coach John Dobson said the following earlier in the season: “We have to prepare to play the northern hemisphere game for when we go over there, and we are doing that in this Currie Cup, but we will also have to develop a different game for when we return to Cape Town to play in dry summer conditions.”

Of all the South African teams of course, WP, who will probably morph back to being the Stormers when PRO16 starts, can anticipate the best rugby conditions for their home games. At least those played over the summer, when it is almost always dry and the only deviation is the south-easter wind that often reaches gale-force intensity.

Dobson doesn’t need to be told that the type of rugby his team has been playing, with it’s heavy orientation on set-piece domination and territory, would take away the home advantage element against northern teams that will then feel they are playing against what they are used to.

The Xerox Lions and the new Currie Cup champions will have a significant advantage when it comes to the altitude factor, something the visiting teams won’t be used to, and the two coastal coaches appear to be in agreement that it is more acute in summer than it is in winter. They will be missing a trick if they don’t try and play with a tempo that will increase the altitude’s impact.

As it turns out, the two highveld teams are the ones that at this stage might be best equipped to turn their home fields into fortresses for other reasons. In the sense that while the Bulls do still rely heavily on forward dominance, they arguably also had the best all-round game in the Currie Cup, with the Lions the next best when it came to that aspect.

COASTAL TEAMS HAVE MUCH THINKING TO DO

The Stormers and the Sharks both have quite a bit of thinking to do. The Sharks should not feel disappointed about losing to the Bulls in the final. Very few expected them to win, and they are a youthful team and their time will surely come. The game plan that has been so severely criticised took them to within a few minutes of a repeat of the historic 1990 upset.

But they rely too much on contestable kicking and when those kicks don’t work out it just leaves the fans feeling frustrated as to them it looks like the great attacking skills of Lukhanyo Am, Sbu Nkosi and Aphelele Fassi are being neglected. The Sharks will have to mix up their game more and they know that there is some contracting to do in some key areas, with the addition of bulk necessary at both front five and to the pool of loose-forwards.

Apart from adding some oomph to the attack the latter recruitments could also sort out one of the other Sharks weaknesses at present, which is that they don’t have enough lineout options.

For WP one of the main challenges might well be one that a succession of Stormers coaches have faced over a period of decades - they need to somehow either grow or recruit halfbacks who can be decisive and control the game. None of the options we have seen this year have worked for them, and that includes World Cup winner Herschel Jantjies, who has some growing to do when it comes to key aspects of modern scrumhalf play.

For the Cape team though perhaps the biggest challenge of all is not up to them but up to the people who work in the corridors of power. There are financial challenges that need to be overcome, and if they aren’t, we might see WP featuring strongly as an exporter when the transfer market opens in April.

MORE NEEDS TO BE DONE TO SELL THE GAME

Regardless of whether you are aligned to the Bulls, the Lions, Stormers or the Sharks, what should be crystal clear by now is that more needs to be done to sell and market the game. That does not apply just to the need to produce a more appealing on-field product, but also to what coaches and players say in media interviews in the build-up to big games.

Having players repeatedly trotting out the line that the most important thing is to not mistakes does nothing to sell rugby. If the sport is just about eliminating mistakes, then there is a good way to achieve that objective, and that is to just not go on the field. And if winning is the only thing that matters, then is there any point to going to the games - you can just get the result afterwards.

At some point fans will be allowed back into stadiums and when that happens everyone in rugby will be hoping that they come in the droves that are needed if the financial setbacks of the Covid period are to be alleviated. We live in a day and age though where people are fussy about the entertainment they choose, and they do have plenty of options.

Until rugby people realise they are in the entertainment business, and that includes law makers who allow re-set scrums to chew up so much time in rugby matches - some find it fascinating but it really isn’t entertaining to the vast majority of watchers - and the driving maul to become the dominant scoring weapon, the sport will be under threat.

When the PRO16 arrives it will offer something new under the sun for South African fans. There’s a dire need for a new on-field approach to coincide with that moment.

Result of Carling Currie Cup final

Vodacom Bulls 26 Cell C Sharks 19

Semifinals previous week

Vodacom Bulls 26 Xerox Lions 21

DHL Western Province 9 Cell C Sharks 19