STRIKING IT RICH: Brok is for Stormers what Daan is for the Boks

CAPE TOWN A LESSON TO SHARKS ON WHEN TO PUFF

So I rack my brain to try to remember an occasion when the DHL Stormers and Hollywoodbets Sharks played each other and I wasn’t either at the game, which has usually been the case, or watched it on television. And I can’t remember one.

That changed this weekend. The beginning of October coincides with my annual timeshare week across the Sabie River from Kruger National Park and, in need of a proper escape into the bush, long ago booked Saturday night at Balule, the rustic satellite camp to Olifants Rest Camp. At the time I didn’t expect the Vodacom URC organisers to schedule a derby round for this early in the season. Stormers/Sharks games in Cape Town are sell-outs when played in January, so it seemed an odd move.

So Brenden Nel covered both derbies this weekend, and I have only just watched the replays of the match on my laptop at an overnight stop in Dullstroom while moving on to a fortnight in the Drakensberg. Phew! Let it be said, there was absolutely no surprise on this end about the result of the DHL Stadium match. That was expected.

There was some concern that the Stormers hadn’t played yet with their Springboks in the team might mean they’d be less cohesive than the Sharks, who had, but ultimately the gut said that the Stormers are just way further down the growth path as a team than the Sharks are.

There were some pleasing signs from the Sharks in their first two URC games. I wrote after the Ospreys game about their energy, and the quest for a DNA and playing identity is obvious. Finally the recruitment and coaching departments at the Durban club do seem aligned. The Sharks do have more depth now, they might be justified to have more hope about the future than they had before.

But when the Sharks issued a press release before the Cape Town game which almost seemed to be saying “we have been brilliant but none of the media are saying so” I nearly coughed my acid reflux onto my laptop.

The time to put out releases like that, the time to list the stats that state unmistakably how good you have been, the time to swank, is when you’ve won a string of games and beaten someone. Leinster might seem like someone, but those people of my ken who had an inside into the mindset of Leinster before last week’s game against the Sharks is that they didn’t expect to win it.

They were well below strength, and last year, when a similar Leinster team came on tour here, they lost both games fairly comprehensively. The Stormers beat them 35-0. Leinster seem to see starting their URC campaign in South Africa as a chance to grow their depth. That’s the context. The Stormers were the first real test for the Sharks and they didn’t pass that test. That doesn’t mean good things aren’t happening in Durban rugby. They most definitely are. They were outplayed at the weekend but outplayed by an excellent team. The Sharks are going to hit an upward trend on their performance graph this season, mark my words on that.

But for goodness sake guys, wait until it’s real, until it’s actually happening, until you’ve played someone other than a mediocre Ospreys team and a Leinster team that was half academy, before you start boasting about it. Two games into a competition that is way more marathon than sprint is not a time to make pronouncements. Ox Nche said in a press conference last week that the Sharks want to talk on the field this year. Wise words. Listen to them. The time to puff is when you’ve won something meaningful.

EXTENT OF STORMERS SCRUM DOMINANCE WAS A SURPRISE

Okay, to return to that exclamation, “Phew!” The result wasn’t a surprise but the manner in which the Stormers scrum completely dismantled the Sharks scrum was. In my supersport.com preview on Friday I predicted the right result, but predicated it on the chasm in experience in the key positions of fullback and flyhalf, where the Stormers had first choice Boks who could arguably be the best in the world and the Sharks had players who are highly promising but haven’t yet celebrated their 21st birthdays.

There was an assumption, given the names on the Sharks’ team sheet who are noted for their scrumming prowess, that the forward battle might be fairly even. I couldn’t have been more wrong, and yet at the same time I was also not trusting my better judgement.

The scrum culture that has been built at the Stormers under Brok Harris, a long time stalwart only recently retired from playing, is not rivalled anywhere in this country. And given that this country leads the world when it comes to scrum, there can be few rivals globally for what has been built at the Stormers around the scrum.

The Sharks do have Thomas du Toit back, and make no mistake, if Bongi Mbonambi comes back fully fit and motivated, the Durbanites will have a highly decorated front row. But scrumming isn’t just about the names on paper, and while the Sharks have beaten all other comers in the scrums recently and we were told in the aforementioned press release just how good their scrum unit had been before Cape Town, the Stormers scrum under Harris’ coaching is another level.

It doesn’t seem to matter sometimes who the Stormers have in their front row and who they are up against, you can always back the pack to give their opponents something to think about. They didn’t have Wilco Louw in their two earlier games, but they dominated the scrums in both, and it was because of the test the Stormers scrum subjected his team to in the opening tour game that All Black coach Dave Rennie became so driven in his quest to make scrumming a less significant point of difference.

Given how the Stormers scrum has grown, and note that word, because time to grow and patience to let them grow is what the Sharks team as a whole need right now, the outcome of the scrum battle in Cape Town should have been more expected. Philip Lemmer is clearly a good scrum coach. The Sharks have Bok props in the starting team and in reserve. But the Stormers have Brok Harris. And Harris is the international club rugby equivalent to the Springboks’ Daan Human. They should name a toll plaza after him.

SORRY BUT TIMING OF SUMMER KICK-OFFS NEEDS A RETHINK

The Mpumalanga and Limpopo regions have been damn hot the past few days. Friday saw me drive through Bushbuckridge to Hoedspruit to pick up my mom’s ashes ahead of a ceremony we are planning with my brothers in the Drakensberg next week. It was why I found myself in Olifants. But phew, yes another phew, it has been a reminder that our hankering for a bit of heat in the cold winters is sometimes misplaced. It was 40 degrees when I passed through Phalaborwa on Friday afternoon. 40 degrees!

And apparently it was 32 degrees when the Vodacom Bulls’ derby against the 10Bet Lions at Loftus kicked off. The kick-off was in the early afternoon, as were the two previous Lions games against Leinster and the Ospreys in Johannesburg. Sorry, but this is ridiculous, and it is not only the player welfare/health issue that drives me to say that, but concern about the spectators.

During the Ospreys game the previous week I felt some respect for those fans who were committed enough to sit in the open at that time on an early summer’s afternoon. The URC organisers want people to flood back to club games in SA like they used to but they need to make it more appealing by taking the needs of the would be paying spectator more to heart.

I was at the All Black tour game when they only just edged home against the Lions at Ellis Park. It was a great game and a great occasion. It also kicked off at 7pm and was played under floodlights. If that game had kicked off at 1.30pm would it have been as good and as enjoyable to be at? If you want fans back, put spectators needs first.

And in answer to the question over why the Lions were so comprehensively outplayed by the Bulls, there is not just one reason that can be forwarded. Firstly, the Bulls were really good. I agree with my colleague Brenden who wrote in his match report that the Lions weren’t that bad.

But I also do think that playing so much rugby on the highveld in the middle of the day at this time of the year, and that means the team must surely have to train at that time, must have some impact after time on energy levels and output.

And if you want to know what the players think you could do worse than looking for the excerpt of the then Bulls captain Marcel Coetzee’s immediate post match interview after the Bulls had thumped the Lions in a similar early afternoon game last season. Coetzee couldn’t contain himself when asked about the heat and let out an expletive. He was immediately embarrassed about it, but his spontaneous response was an indicator of how he, and no doubt many other players, feel about it.

COACHES NEED TO SEE THE BIGGER PICTURE

So one of the reasons the Lions would have so many early games, and the Bulls too, is that the coaches will want it. They have a say when the home games are played, an input in the planning and timing of fixtures. And obviously from the viewpoint of giving their team the best chance to win, a game in the bright sunshine at altitude favours highveld based teams.

And apparently John Dobson was complicit in the timing of some really unsuitably timed fixtures, kicking off just after lunch time in Cape Town which is just not zoned to attract the maximum crowd, in April last year. Apart from the nightmare for spectators of having to get through noon Saturday traffic, there is the not insignificant matter of school games also being played at that time during that period of the year, something that definitely seems to also impact the early afternoon crowd figures at Loftus games when for instance Affies are playing big games.

The Stormers were in the running for a new record of crowd attendance in the URC and may well have broken it had the timing of the fixtures been more suitable to the people who should matter most, but failed to do so as smaller crowds pitched for the last few early afternoon league games than would have been the case had the games been played in the evening.

Dobson did apparently have to have a debate with the “front office”, meaning the marketing people, over the timing of fixtures, and this is one time I back the marketers ahead of the rugby side of the business. Dobson’s desire to see early games played in the autumn was directed by former Ospreys coach Toby Flood telling him after the Welsh team shocked the Stormers a few years ago that the evening game suited his men as it felt like Swansea.

But it shouldn’t just be about what gives your team the best chance of winning, or the All Blacks would play all their games at Eden Park. They’d seldom lose there, but what would that mean to the sell of the game in the rest of New Zealand.

THERE WAS PROPER HISTORY GOING INTO THE BLEDISLOE GAME

There was a debate on one of the podcasts I was on last week over the Stormers/Sharks game. I was convinced the Stormers would win for reasons I have already outlined above and also in my preview to the game, but the opposite view was a staunch belief that history was on the Sharks’ side.

Which was not something I could see. The Sharks beat the Stormers twice last season, but their win in Cape Town was their first in the city in several seasons, and when they pipped the Stormers by the narrowest of margins the season before it was their first ever URC win over the Stormers. So that’s three wins in the entire history of the competition. What was I missing?

My argument that the history spoken of here was irrelevant, and that there was actually context to both Stormers losses to the Sharks last year, was counter-balanced by a clear conviction that the All Blacks would win their opening Bledisloe Cup game. Sorry, not losing at a venue since 1994, that is history. So when you preview an Eden Park game featuring the All Blacks, yes, history does have to be spoken about. And it is a phenomenal record the All Blacks have in Auckland, bordering on freakish. There wasn’t much surprise from my side that the Stormers won on Saturday, but even less that the All Blacks did.

LEARNING FROM MISTAKES

So we often focus on rugby people learning from mistakes made, but some of us other people can too. I wrote about my running out of petrol just outside Richmond in this column following my drive back from the third Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry test in Soweto. So when I got to Richmond on my journey to where I am now, I figured it out - fill up now and you will definitely make Joburg.

That trip in September actually started with a fill up in Rosebank, whereas the fuel light came on this time in Grasmere, but I will take that as just confirmation that driving uphill makes a difference and also that I was driving my more modern, fuel efficient vehicle. The point is that it was a lesson learnt, just like it should be a lesson learnt for those who thought the games would turn out

differently to how they did this week based on perceptions of revival that have too small a sample size. Referring to the Sharks and Wallabies of course. It could change, and it will change for the Sharks, but right now the confidence in those teams was based on what had been false dawns.