Local teams behaving like crayfish again

https://www.supersport.com/rugby/super-rugby/news/190408_Local_teams_behaving_like_crayfish_again

By Gavin Rich

The South African Vodacom Super Rugby teams are behaving like crayfish again. In the sense that every time one threatens to get out of the net, the others manage to pull them back in.

This week that came with the help of the Jaguares, who are in the same conference and who up to now have been equally as mediocre as the South African teams. But they won at Loftus. Just as a Reds team, that frankly isn’t really any great shakes, won in Brisbane against a Stormers team that featured seven changes, as did the Bulls a day later.

Maybe there’s something in that. The make-up of the personnel does matter, and no-one has demonstrated that more dramatically this season than the Lions.

Comfortable conference winners for three years in a row, there was a stage last year where the Lions hadn’t lost to a fellow South African team since 2015. But ever since that narrow loss to the Sharks last July in Durban, the Lions haven’t beaten another local team.

Looking at the derbies that have been played so far this year is indeed instructive if you are trying to figure out the pecking order. The Bulls have played four derbies and won four. The Stormers have played three and won two. The Sharks have now played four and won just one. The Lions have played three and lost three.

Although the Sharks are out in front of the local conference at the moment, the above is probably the way the South African teams rank at the moment. The Stormers are last on the log currently but they have now almost completed their tour of Australasia and unlike last year at this time, they are still in touch with the leaders, who have dropped two derby matches at home in addition to the one away.

Good though the Sharks were in dispatching the Lions, the question mark that always hovers over them remains - how will they fare when they don’t get physical domination? They did get that against the Lions, and with Curwin Bosch’s X-factor introduced at fullback and making a massive difference to their hitherto predictable attack, they played a poor Lions team off the park.

Will they be able to do that against a Stormers team when the Cape side’s pack is at full strength? Their loss in Durban near the beginning of the competition suggests not. And let’s not even think about the Crusaders, who bump the Sharks in Christchurch in a couple of weeks from now.

ELECTRIC BOSCH

The performance of Bosch though did send out a message that the Sharks coach Robert du Preez would do well to heed. If the former South African Schools flyhalf can wreak such havoc and make such a difference from fullback, what might he do if he is asked to direct play with the No 10 on his back?

To put it simply, he asks questions of opposing defensive systems that the other flyhalves don’t. With Robert du Preez junior wearing the Sharks No 10, it is easier for defensive systems to focus on the players outside him as they don’t expect the flyhalf to test them.

Not that it helped the Lions at Emirates Airlines Park, and if there is one team that is in real trouble it is the one from Johannesburg. They are not faltering away from home, they are faltering in their supposed fortress.

This was the second time this season they were outplayed by a South African team at a ground where previously they seemed pretty impregnable, at least when facing local sides. With reference to the personnel issue mentioned earlier, it is easy to see why: They have lost most of the pack that fronted their challenge in previous seasons.

Initially, when Warren Whiteley was in charge and playing well in tandem with Malcolm Marx in the Super Hero Day friendly in Cape Town against the Sharks, and then in the historic win in Buenos Aires that started their campaign, it didn’t seem to matter. But subsequent injuries, not the least the one to their regular captain, has left them looking decidedly mediocre as a unit.

Let’s not forget either that if it were not for the altitude factor that sometimes bites overseas teams, they would probably have been comprehensively beaten by the Rebels too. The first half of that game a couple of weeks ago was even worse for the Lions than the first 40 minutes against a Sharks team that played like men possessed.

The commentators did keep suggesting in the build-up to halftime of the Johannesburg game that the Lions might effect another dramatic comeback, but that was never going to happen. Altitude is not as much of a factor in the cool night air, and it was wet. Plus the South African coastal teams, because they play on the highveld more often, know a bit more about the effects of the rarified air than Australasian teams do.

THE LIONS LOOK IN REAL TROUBLE

The magnitude of the Sharks victory was the big surprise of the weekend locally. Most would have given them a chance of winning given the perception that the Lions pack is the one local pack that the Sharks can definitely dominate, but no-one should have bet on them winning by 37 points.

Is that an indication of a Sharks turn-around, or does it just underline that the Lions are in trouble and are not the team that they were? Time will tell on the first point. On the second you’d have to say that the evidence is starting to become overwhelming.

BUTCH PUT HIS FINGER ON IT

Studio comments man and former Bok flyhalf Butch James probably best summed up why the Stormers lost in Brisbane when he said they aren’t the same team when Pieter-Steph du Toit and Eben Etzebeth aren’t playing. It was always going to be at best a 50/50 game, with the Stormers having a good chance of losing, once they had made their seven changes.

Their white line fever persists too. Every time they are narrowly denied a try, like they were on two or three occasions in the first half at Suncorp, their confidence appears to slip. You should also question the game the Cape team are playing at present.

Against the Hurricanes they were too direct and forward orientated. But they lost by six points. The last two games they have been in a rush to get the ball to the wide channels, and they have lost their directness.

TYPICALLY HYSTERICAL CAPE REACTION

Blaming coach Robbie Fleck for the defeat, and suggesting John Dobson should take over now, is a typically hysterical Cape reaction. The facts of the matter are that Fleck is working with Dobson’s management team and Dobson is involved in the campaign and quite happy to be learning from the one remaining management member who has been through several Super Rugby campaigns.

Remember, the Stormers have lost former director of rugby Gert Smal, who played a big role in their dressing room and in their preparation in the past. Dropping Fleck now would achieve no purpose. In fact, given that the other coaches are learning and are in their first Super Rugby campaign, it would be detrimental to a campaign that could still come up trumps given that most of their remaining games are at home.

Added to that, they are still within touching distance of log leaders they know they have the measure of, and they should feature freshened-up star players now that Siya Kolisi has joined Du Toit etc in Cape Town to prepare for the Newlands phase of the competition.

THAT MISSING LINK

But a question was asked in my supersport.com match report for the Brisbane game that requires additional comment - it was the point about something apparently missing from the Stormers game and not being sure quite what it is. The word that was brought up on Friday was ‘clinical’, which of course feeds off confidence.

James might have had it close to the money when he spoke about the personnel that were missing, but perhaps he’d have been closer to the money if he mentioned the personnel the Stormers just haven’t had in two decades - namely a world class flyhalf. And scrumhalf too for that matter.

They have a formidable pack, particularly when at full strength, but it still isn't bad when under-strength. They also have decent outside backs. What is missing is the direction that a really top class and experienced halfback duo would give them.

BULLS BUTCHERED IT IN WEEKEND OF TELLING YELLOW CARDS

The Bulls do have classy haflbacks when they are at full strength. But they didn’t have Handre Pollard at Loftus against the Jaguares, and it was one of the reasons they lost, along with the other six changes. That also doesn’t tell the full story. The Bulls should have put the Jaguares away long before that last 10 minutes when first one, and then two yellow cards stymied them.

It was a weekend where yellow cards played a big role in keeping the South African teams mired in mediocrity, for Siya Kolisi’s yellow card was the difference in the teams in Brisbane too.

ANOTHER PLANET

Meanwhile, those who watched the New Zealand derby between the Highlanders and Hurricanes on Friday morning would have seen rugby that looked like it came from a different planet in comparison to what the local teams are dishing up…