Dewaldt warns against writing off resurgent Benetton

Italian team Benetton will go into the PRO14 Rainbow Cup final against the Vodacom Bulls in Treviso on Saturday as rank underdogs but their South African scrumhalf Dewaldt Duvenage has warned against reading too much into the home team's form of a few months ago.

The reason many have written Benetton off is because in the PRO14 season they didn’t win a single game in 16 starts, and like their fellow Italian team, Zebre, they finished bottom of their section. However, Benetton have picked up since then, with better performances in the Challenge Cup laying the platform for their unbeaten run so far in the Rainbow Cup.

Duvenage says there is a reason for the resurgence.

“I don’t want to make excuses but the pandemic was a huge factor for us because we had 14 guys in the Italian national squad,” said the 33-year-old former Stormers and South Africa under-20 scrumhalf.

“The national squad was in a bubble for a long time so it meant that we didn’t have the services of those 14 players for pretty much the whole season. That had a huge impact on us. And we were also without our defence coach, South African Marius Goosen, as he was also with the Italian team. So, we played the entire PRO14 season without a defence coach.

“But while that was a problem for us during the PRO14 in terms of results, that whole experience saw the group grow a lot tighter. Young guys started to come through in the absence of the older guys and some of them developed really well. If you look at our results you think that is bad, but a lot of our games, particularly towards the end, were really close losses, with us just losing in the last minutes. It felt like we were on an upward curve.”

TEAM ON AN UPWARD CURVE

That upward curve became much sharper once the Italian national players returned after the Six Nations season was completed.

“This might sound odd but I think a big turning point might have been a barbeque (braai) we had as a team at the end of the PRO14 season. Our coach, Kieran Crowley, through all the books and manuals we’d been working off during the campaign into the fire and said ‘Right, that is done, now we start afresh.

“Our form started improving in the Challenge Cup, where we got a couple of wins, but the big result for us was the first Rainbow Cup game against Glasgow Warriors. The Warriors were at full strength but we really hammered them in that game. I can’t remember the score but we got nearly 50 and their only points came in the last five minutes when they scored a few tries when we had brought on the replacements and the game was already comfortably won with a bonus point.

“For the guys who had really bonded through the tough times, the confidence that came with that win was a massive boost. After that it just felt like a lot had changed and that we were on a different path. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but it feels like we’ve been on the up. We didn’t really play that well in our two games against Zebre, which were typical derbies, but we saw it as a good sign that we won while not playing our best, and it was the same in our win against Connacht.

“I know we may have got a bit of luck in not having to travel for our last game because of the pandemic, with Ospreys forfeiting the match points to us, but it has just felt like the stars are aligned and the guys are determined to make the most of this opportunity. To have a home final is amazing. Normally it is neutral venues for a final in PRO14.”

STEPPING INTO THE UNKNOWN

Duvenhage says that at a recent team meeting the players were asked how many had been part of finals before. Only four or five players put up their hands. But he reckons that inexperience of finals could be a good thing for the team.

“I had a few times playing against the Bulls in play-off games, like the Soweto Super Rugby final (in 2010) and that Currie Cup semifinal we (Western Province) lost to a last minute Morne Steyn penalty (in 2009),” recalls Duvenage.

“So, I have had that experience of playing them in a final. Regarding the Bulls, all South Africans have that thing that they do, which is physicality. But we are quite physical too, so not having tested ourselves against a team from the south, that is an unknown factor at the moment. Not many of our guys have played in final, but maybe not knowing what to expect and having nothing to lose might be a good thing.

“We won’t be going onto the field with that mindset that we’ve lost finals before and we have a mental block or something like that. The guys will be out to make the most of the experience and see how far they can get. We know we have been written off by journalists, but South Africans maybe need to realise that while we are an Italian team, we are not the Italian national team, in that we have a lot of foreign players in the group.”

FAREWELL TO KEY INDIVIDUALS WILL ADD MOTIVATION

Some of those foreign players, such as Australian fullback Jaden Hayward, are joining a raft of the older Italian national players in playing their last games on Saturday, and that is another reason why Benetton are preparing themselves for a special effort against the Bulls.

“We are also saying goodbye to our head coach, who is taking over at Italy, and our defence coach, so yes, apart from this being a final, it is going to be a special occasion and there are lots of reasons why we want to end off really well and hopefully get a trophy. For Benetton that would be huge.”

According to Duvenage there has been massive hype around the game in Benetton's home town of Treviso, which he says is a rugby mad Italian town.

"A lot of our supporters are real, old rugby people so the Bulls training sessions will have been watched by spectators and on Wednesday there was a big event in the plaza in the centre of the town where both teams were introduced to the public," he says.

"It feels like there is a real rugby festival atmosphere enveloping the region and that is great to be a part of. We also have fans back on Saturday for the first time since the start of the pandemic and while there will only be 1500 people in the stadium, I am sure that will make a big difference. Putting in a big tackle that is accompanied by a roar of approval from the crowd is so much more motivating for a player. We're looking forward to experiencing that again."