Currie Cup's northern road
Cape Town – Ah well, it will be a case of “unfinished business” as Loftus hosts the 2009 Absa Currie Cup final between the Blue Bulls and Cheetahs in a fortnight.
When last these teams met in the domestic showpiece, three years ago, the Bloemfontein spoils were rarely shared in a 28-28 thriller.
A more decisive outcome, you would think, will occur this time -- unless lightning strikes twice.
And yet it was so nearly an entirely different scenario, as the Sharks and Western Province respectively were left to rue late, late heroic strikes – a dropped goal in Durban by Jacques-Louis Potgieter and long-range penalty in Cape Town from ice-cool Morne Steyn – to take the major coastal powers out of the equation after riveting semi-finals on Saturday.
Perhaps the more broken hearts will be found in the Mother City, where WP succumbed with enormous honour to the Bulls juggernaut, the latter team’s superior experience of red-letter occasions (not to mention Steyn’s uncanny place-kicking composure, of course) seeing them through in a 21-19 nail-biter where the marginally better side arguably lost.
This match, before a throbbing crowd of 48 000, was always going to be a case, I had speculated in the lead-up, of the established artwork – the Super 14 champion Bulls – against the very encouraging work in progress that is Western Province.
The hosts so nearly crafted the fairytale Picasso, if you like, but finally ran out of “bidders” for their 2009 painting as a seven-out-of-seven penalties performance by Steyn effectively snatched the game from the fire for the Bulls.
Luke Watson’s gutsy losers were credited with the only try, butchered one or two other strong opportunities with fatal lapses of composure, and generally fronted up to the full-strength, great northern steamroller admirably.
Even if the controversial Watson – he truly led from the trenches -- will be absent in English climes next season, there was consolation for Province in the fact that their predominantly young squad has laid down a serious marker of intent now for 2010.
This match, a fitting re-stirring of north-south passions of old, was played with clattering commitment and sporadic doses of spite, but you would imagine a few after-match ales would have been sunk between the protagonists by way of acknowledgement of mutual respect.
There was a wonderful moment in the 64th minute when substitute flank Schalk Burger buried Springbok colleague Fourie du Preez in the turf with as brutal (yet legal) a tackle as you will see in the next few years, got the crowd really “amped” with a subsequent gung-ho fist-pump, but then patted the great scrumhalf on the back a minute later to ascertain whether he was back in chipper health.
If you had been present only for the first 20 minutes or so of the encounter, you might have been forgiven for expecting a near-cricket score by the Bulls, as they eased effortlessly into a 12-0 lead with consistent, great field position, consummate space for Du Preez and Steyn to operate in, and WP looking like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights on their supposed big date.
But Province showed their mettle by gaining progressively in self-belief, to the extent that -- until Sireli Naqelevuki’s fateful, match-deciding high tackle on Jaco Pretorius in the 76th minute -- they had both grabbed the lead and looked likelier winners.
Watson was at the fore of his team’s impressive “wake-up”, with some body-on-line tackling and crucial turnover steals under pressure, and the likes of Tiaan Liebenberg not far behind – the fiery hooker put in some powerful, ball-in-hand surges at the generally assured and crucially well-drilled Bulls defence.
Not for nothing are the experienced core of the Pretoria-based team genuinely world-class players: they just know how to dig deep when the dice appears ominously loaded against them and Steyn … well, the man’s simply a machine when it comes to cashing in on opportunities at the posts, from near and far.
The Bulls were pipped in the ball-on-the-deck department, among others, but they countered in open play with Pierre Spies’s monster charges – the freakishly stout No 8 keeps moving up notches this year in his quest to prove he’s the best in the land in that jersey by a distance.
In the end the Bulls collectively just did enough, and they will be grateful for the two-week opportunity to recharge batteries now for the Cheetahs onslaught on October 31.
You have to laud the Free Staters for their booked presence at the Loftus spectacle: they had a quite shocking start to the round-robin campaign, yet gradually turned their disarray into decent dance-steps, and will happily go into the Pretoria crunch as cheeky underdogs.
Just as the WP pack did with some success in the Cape Town semi-final, they will strike tenaciously at the Bulls’ heart by targeting their questionable set scrum, perhaps the one lingering area of concern around their game.
On Saturday it was the turn of the Sharks’ all-Springbok front row to get a bit of an ego-bashing from Wian du Preez, Richardt Strauss and WP Nel – at least in the first half, until hooker Strauss’s injury took him out of the picture and the Cheetahs had to put No 8 Ashley Johnson smack into the middle of the boiler room because they ill-advisedly had no specialist No 2 back-up on the bench.
Tighthead Nel must have done much to influence the Springbok selectors to pick him for the looming northern hemisphere tour, although you have to wonder about the match-fitness of at least four members of the Sharks’ tight five, all of whom had had touch-and-go injury concerns going into the knockout encounter.
But that is all spilled milk, and as far as the 2009 Currie Cup goes, all roads truly lead to the Highveld heartland of the country for the big decider …
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