BRINGING PERSPECTIVE
Last Friday afternoon provided one of those weird moments. The confirmation of the untimely and tragic death of Lions lock Hyron Andrews had just come through to the inbox, when I received another email. This one was also about a lock, but a very different scenario. Corne Rahl, the big Sharks lock, will be continuing his career at the Stormers from next season.
Fortunately my colleague Brenden Nel covers the Lions so all the writing about Andrews’ death could be left to him. The Stormers, along with the Sharks, is my beat for Supersport.com, so naturally I put out a story on Rahl’s pending move. It could not be ignored. But it did kind of feel almost irrelevant and maybe odd timing compared to what had happened in distant France a few hours earlier.
For sportswriters who are used to writing about failed sporting missions and defeats as if they are tragedies and disasters, a real tragedy always brings some perspective. And also gives you a kind of fish out of water feeling.
I remember early in my career the death in the change-room after the curtain-raiser to the 1991 Currie Cup final between Northern Transvaal and Transvaal of the Bulls strongman Jan Locke becoming a very important story that overshadowed the climax of that domestic season.
Suddenly it seemed a bit wrong to be writing about the Northern Transvaal win as if it was something to ceebrate. Locke had been dropped to the B team but he’d been a long time stalwart.
Then a few months later, in the early stages of the 1992 season, on my beat in Durban where I was writing for The Natal Mercury and naturally then very Natal focused, there was the tragic death on his sugar farm on the KZN north coast of the highly promising Natal and former Transvaal hooker Shaun Gage.
Natal went on to win the Currie Cup that season and I can’t remember there being a dedication to Gage when they beat Transvaal at Ellis Park, but certainly the next game after Gage’s death, I think it was against Western Province, was very emotional and the Natal performance was driven by emotion.
Which the Lions’ performance against La Rochelle last week was too. It was their debut in the Champions Cup, but I was glad to be informed that there was a vote taken on whether they should play that game or not. Some of the players looked over-wrought in the pre-match space, and understandably so, and it would not have been good if it turned out their arm was forced.
It doesn’t appear it was, but them playing the game did leave me wondering how they’d celebrate what would be a remarkable win had that happened. Surely a show of elation, which would normally be standard after such a win, would be seen as inappropriate given that they’d just lost one of their brothers the day before.
GOOD ACQUISITIONS
So back to the Corne Rahl story. That strikes me as more excellent business by the Stormers, though it does confound me a bit that they found themselves in the position they are in in the first place - having to replace two Springbok locks in the form of Salmaan Moerat, gone to La Rochelle and who played off the French team’s bench last week, and Ruben van Heerden (Montpellier).
Rahl is just 24 and I can well remember Eben Etzebeth, when he first played with the then youngster at the Sharks, saying that he thought that the product of Montagu and Oakdale College in Riversdale was going on to be a great player. Injuries have prevented him from picking up full momentum, but I think Etzebeth is right, and perhaps the change of environment - he links with the Stormers from 1 July next year - will do him good.
Like many other Stormers acquisitions, he is effectively coming home. Montagu, where he grew up, is in the Stormers’ region.
If, as expected, the Bulls complete the signing of Springbok looseforward Kwagga Smith, that is also a good signing. In fact, the more Boks playing overseas that can be lured back home the better as it will increase interest in the local teams playing in the club competitions, and also improve their chances of winning silverware, with the Champions Cup, which will require star input, being the Holy Grail but the URC the bread and butter competition also very important.
The Bulls are also talking to Malcolm Marx, and why wouldn’t they be given that Marx is the World Rugby Player of the Year. But they are reportedly in competition with the Sharks for his signature and I would prefer Marx to go to Durban. Why? Not because of any Sharks leanings, but it really feels like the Bulls are well enough served at hooker, where they have Johan Grobbelaar and Jan-Hendrik Wessels, among others, on their books.
Both of those players are Boks and in my eyes Wessels is the likely long term heir apparent for Marx in the Bok setup. At least that will be the case if Esethu Mnebelele, the Junior Bok captain who moved in the early season from the Bulls to the Sharks, doesn’t come through quicker than expected. Who better for Mnebelele to learn off than Marx?
THIS WAS THE SHARKS’ OPPORTUNITY TO SWANK
It was only a Challenge Cup game, but after the win over Lyon was perhaps a more appropriate time for the Sharks’ marketing people to get excited about their team’s performance and start making pronouncements than before the Stormers game two weeks ago.
The two home wins that started the URC season for the Sharks were encouraging, but they were at home, and the caveat was that Leinster were very understrength in Durban.
The Stormers were always going to be a formidable obstacle, and the ease with which they won in Cape Town made the Sharks’ press release put out in the week of that game which almost seemed to say “We are so brilliant but the media aren’t noticing”, seem a bit silly.
There was a much more muted response, it was a kind of business as usual approach, to the communications after the Lyon victory, but maybe there shouldn’t have been. The Sharks need to back up against Cardiff to keep the momentum, but for me the performance in Lyon did confirm several things around the progress being made in Durban around aspects like team culture, playing shape and game identity.
If it was achieved by their full strength team we wouldn’t be getting excited, but it wasn’t achieved by a full strength team. The side that plays Cardiff on Friday night, with the Boks back, looks very different.
Clearly the Sharks’ changes to their recruitment department are already reaping some dividends because if there is a depth issue at the Durban club it has become a lot less apparent.
FOR PLAYER WELFARE 4G PITCHES SHOULD BE SCRAPPED
Seeing as British and Irish Lions and Wales wing Louis Rees-Zammit was so vocal in the UK media last week about his opposition to playing on 4G pitches, I decided to press Stephan Lewies, now back with the Sharks but fresh from several seasons playing in England with the Harlequins, on it. It was clear he didn’t like 4G pitches, but what did the rest of the UK body of players feel about it.
He had to be polite and didn’t want to be controversial, but the 34 year old gave me what I was looking for. He didn’t know a single player who liked 4G pitches and said that most players would prefer not to have to play on them.
I am not sure what players who play on them every second week because they are home venue surfaces think, such as the players from Glasgow Warriors, Edinburgh and the next Sharks’ opponents, Cardiff, but Lewies just confirmed what I keep hearing.
As Lewies said, it is easy to understand why there are 4G pitches becoming more prevalent in the UK, Ireland and France (the Sharks’ win over Lyon was on a 4G surface). It saves clubs a lot of money because it is very costly to upkeep grass fields given the winter weather conditions in the northern hemisphere.
But what about the players? What about the cost to them? I remember the new Fiji coach Jake White, when he was in charge of the Bulls, being incensed when he lost his then star flyhalf Johan Goosen to a long term injury on a 4G surface a few years ago. And in conversation the Stormers have blamed the early season injuries to Marcel Theunissen, who is out for a few months after an operation, and Evan Roos on training on a 4G surface before the URC opener against Connacht.
There have been numerous other injuries sustained on those surfaces and in the wake of Rees-Zammit very publicly voicing not only his own concerns but those of players generally, a relook is needed into the question of 4G surfaces. The players want to play on grass and on grass is where they should play.
I AM THE PROTEAS’ LUCKY CHARM
So I am still away from my home. As I wrote in a previous Striking It Rich, I didn’t cover the Stormers/Sharks game live because I was in the bush, near Olifants in the Kruger National Park.
Not long after penning that column from Dullstroom I was on the road to the Drakensberg, via Ermelo along the N11 through Newcastle and before that Volksrust near the site of the battles of Majuba and Laings Nek (first Anglo-Boer War), Ladysmith (which gave us Andre Joubert and not just a famous Boer War siege), the turn-off to Winterton (where former Bok flyhalf legend Henry Honiball resides - no he isn’t the Bergville farmer, he’s the Winterton farmer) and down to the turn-off off the N3 onto the R617 that takes one to Underberg.
And from there through to my timeshare at Drakensberg Gardens, from whence I am penning this.
I deliberately did not watch any of the first cricket Test between the Proteas and Australia, although I had initially planned to be there. Firstly because it was impossible from the bush.
Secondly because to me test cricket is like a book that you get so absorbed in, you can’t think of anything else. It becomes all consuming. And thirdly because I knew what was going to happen at Kingsmead. What did anyone think was going to happen? The Proteas hadn’t played Test cricket for 11 months.
That first test was so predictable because it keeps happening. Even in the first tests that the Proteas have won in Australia - 2008 and 2016 - it took them the first two innings of the game to shake off rust before they switched on. Remember how they chased down 414 in Perth in 2008. And in 2016 they were bowled out for a negligible first inning score and had that score passed with one wicket down and came back to win with a commendable bowling effort followed by a mammoth third innings.
With rain falling on the first two days of the second test in Gqeberha I did not watch much, so my proper absorption into the series, as in full ball by ball engagement, began on the third morning of this last test. And guess what - the Proteas haven’t put a foot wrong since I switched on. And I am going to the first four days of the Newlands test too - the final day clashes with Stormers versus Ulster - so with their lucky charm now properly engaged they should be red hot favourites to win the series.
To be serious though, that fightback in Gqeberha was extraordinary, and in some ways quite typical of the Proteas. When the Aussies fought back from 124 for six in the first test - he picked up the scores on his phone - my brother, who lives in Australia and was the reason I went to the Kruger, commented that “we always let the Aussies off the hook”.
My response was that there have been many occasions it has been the Proteas who have fought back, with Melbourne 2008 and JP Duminy’s match winning partnership with Dale Steyn being a prime example.
There was also one in England when the Proteas were 24 for 4 on the first morning but fought back through a big partnership between Gary Kirsten and Monde Zondeki to win the game with some degree of comfort.