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In a season of heroes, Superbru is the toughest

rugby05 March 2019 16:52| © SuperSport
By:Johan Coetzee
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SuperWrap - week three, 2019

Hands up if you were one of SuperBru’s 18 Grand Slam Point winners during round three of this year’s Vodacom Super Rugby tournament. We would like to publicly name and shame you.

You sir, had a shocker!

It is fair to say that the only person who had any real reason to back the Sunwolves over the Chiefs (in New Zealand) was Gerhard van den Heever’s mom, and she only did it because she doesn’t even play that rotten prediction game.

Point me to a single event during the first two rounds of the competition that would have lead a sane person to believe that the Stormers could beat the Sharks in Durban? Admit it, if you got that one right you did so by clicking on the wrong team by mistake.

SuperBru’s community average this past weekend was 3.23 correct calls, but all that does is show us how many idiots there are in our community. I got two from seven, like a true rugby fan.

And as with true rugby fans anywhere else, I am delighted by the fact that I’ll probably score another 2/7 this week (which will make it my third two-for in four weeks – something that deserves a badge of its own).

What you don’t want to be is a ‘struesbob Grand Slam Points winner. That can only mean you’re not having half the fun the rest of us are watching this year’s tournament.

Over on the fun side of that community average line we’re having a first-time-ever-at-an-East-Rand-golf-club kinda jol. We live in constant amazement of what it is we see, and we’re never able to anticipate what will happen next.

And when it comes to Super Rugby, that is a good thing.

For years now the competition has been criticised for being too predictable. New Zealand sides, it was said, only had to pitch at a match and a win was guaranteed. It was only the conference system that allowed two other countries a small slice of the playoff pie.

That same conference system only existed because three teams were added that never had a hope in hell to ever be competitive.

Then round three happened.

Japan’s Sunwolves, Argentina’s Jaguares and the AFL-loving Melbourne’s Rebels all managed to beat opposition from the land of the long white loud. As with tummies at a bachelor’s party, the only things guaranteed were upsets.

This year’s edition of the world’s toughest provincial tournament is not predictable. It is not being dominated by just one country and so far no-one’s even noticed the format. That is exactly what makes it so darn watchable.

I think we’d all prefer to be wrong in our educated guesses if the opposite of that was to be bored.

Now, I’m not charmed enough yet to think that Super Rugby has been subject to a dramatic behind-the-scenes overhaul somewhere in the off-season. No, we have a pretty good idea of where these SuperBru affronts are coming from.

This is a World Cup year and in a year like this different countries take vastly different approaches to how they build up to that all-important clash for the Webb Ellis Cup.

New Zealand has decided to rest quite a few All Blacks at the start of the Super Rugby season, and it looks suspiciously as if their franchises all went into the competition intentionally undercooked. Most experts will agree with them that it is really difficult for any athlete to peak twice in the space of ten months, so a gradual ascend to form certainly makes sense from a physiological point of view.

South Africa and Australia seem to have gone the opposite route. Both of them are trying to throw as hard a punch as they can manage in the early rounds of Super Rugby, knowing that momentum counts for a lot in this tournament - and confidence even more so if you harbour any ideas of wresting the World Champions title from the all-conquering Kiwis. This approach makes a lot of sense psychologically.

The upshot of this all is that while Super Rugby may eventually settle into its usual pattern, the rest of the year is set up for a corker.

As the Six Nations is currently showing us (and keeping in mind that we had four Southern Hemisphere semifinalists at the 2015 RWC) – any one of nine countries have a realistic chance at winning the sport’s biggest prize later this year. There are very few sports in the world that can say that, if any.

No one knows what is going to happen, and we all love it.

Except for those Grand Slam Point winners. They should put in their World Cup picks so long and then - like pregnant fathers - find something else to entertain them for the next nine months.

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Time for us to have a look at what happened elsewhere in the world of rugby.

Best tries:

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Best of Social:


Can't unsee that!

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Can't unsee that either!

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Bokskick? Talk about a Freudian slip.

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We should all stick to playing horses.

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GOCHA!

The rugby world was all agog this week as news leaked in New Zealand media of a plan by the game’s top officials to create a 12-team World League competition.

The idea was widely criticised, not only by prominent players, but also by those international teams that are set to miss out on the action. In this regard the Pacific Island nations were especially vociferous.

The quote of the week, however, belongs to Georgia Rugby president Gocha Svanidze, who made his views abundantly clear in a three-minute sub-titled video address on Twitter.

"I will say that all those who are fond of rugby and who share rugby values, cannot accept the outlook which recently leaked, probably, a couple of snub-nosed retrograde officials, who cannot see further than their own noses," he said.

If only he would tell us what he really thinks.

Not that he is wrong.

I FEEL IT IN MY FINGERS . . .

Springbok hooker Bismarck du Plessis made the news this week when he admitted to thetimes.co.uk that he continued playing rugby last year despite knowing he had a serious injury.

Du Plessis suffered a large hernia in his neck almost a year ago, but ignored unbearable pain and his own wisdom in an effort to help his club side Montpellier in their push for France's Top 14 Championship.

"I am a little bit ashamed of what I did," Du Plessis confessed in an interview with the English newspaper.

"Looking back, how stupid was I? It got so bad my wife and I couldn't sleep in the same bed because every three or four hours I needed painkillers."

The injury cost Du Plessis his spot in the squad for the Boks' series against England last June and he ultimately required surgery after Montpellier went down in the Top 14 final.

The 79-test veteran revealed the problem saw him lose some feeling in his left hand while he relied on painkillers around the clock in an effort to keep himself on the park.

"The pins and needles went down to the last two fingers of my left hand but I never stopped playing," he said.

Here at the Wrap desk we are only too relieved to know that he seemingly suffered no serious long-term health issues.

New rule: Bismarck has to phone his brother Jannie (also a Springbok, but more importantly a medical doctor) at least once a week.

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