Halfway through the first Super XV rugby season if you told me we would have three teams in the top half of the Combined Log, I wouldn’t have believed it.

The Stormers started the season well, The Bulls started off and narrowly beat the Lions and Cheetahs, the Sharks looked like they were trudging through thick mud, and well the Cheetahs and Lions looked like they were once gain going to fill the bottom of the Log.

Same old, same old, at least that was what we expected from our 5 Franchises.

But then the turn around came.

Here’s how the South African sides fared:

**************************

The Stormers after losing against the Crusaders at home and then to a poor Chiefs team away, started their most successful Antipodean quest in recent years, They won a close affair with a massive 2^nd half comeback against the Blues, saw off the Brumbies in a dire affair, and then trounced the Rebels. Their defensive organisation has been exemplary this season, with Jaque Fourie and Jean de Villiers leading the fray. Although not scoring too many tries they have shown in the last number of weeks that they do have the ability to finish off moves when it counted.

The Sharks looked like they wouldn’t make the play offs, after a fast start of 4 consecutive wins, two of them in Australia, they came unstuck against a Chiefs team who let’s face it aren’t at the top of their game this year. Although they fought back hard against the Crusaders at Twickenham, it looked like the Sharks were running out of ideas, they became predictable, kept on attacking the close channels, often with forwards going back in the tackle, then looked clueless against the Stormers to add their third straight loss. It took a rampant Sharks team to play against the Lions to break their losing streak. After beating the Hurricanes quite comfortably they again fell apart against a very well defensively organised Stormers team. At the latter part of the competition the inconsistent Sharks put themselves under huge pressure and simply had to beat the Bulls to qualify.

The Bulls started their campaign unconvincingly, they barely beat the Cheetahs and the Lions. They then lost to a rampant Highlanders team at Loftus, got despatched by the Stormers and were then trounced by the Crusaders, lost valiantly against the Reds, lost to the Western Force with their only Antipodean win coming against the struggling Hurricanes. The Bulls then had the unenviable task of having to come home and win every match from there on in to qualify for the play-off’s. Well they almost did, until they met the Sharks who on the day showed the intensity and physicality to see off the Bulls in what in my view was the best high intensity match of the tournament thus far.

Giant killers Cheetahs is my SA Franchise of the season. Simply because even with Juan Smith and Heinrich Brussow playing almost no rugby during the season, the Cheetahs came away with the scalps of the Waratahs and Crusaders (being the only SA team to have beaten this champion side), ending their season on 5 wins (their most ever) and no less than 7 matches within 7 points of the opposition. They played a brand of rugby that would excite any rugby fan, turn overs were made by any, I repeat any player that was close to the ruck, you wouldn’t even have noticed that Brussow wasn’t there! In Ashley Johnson they found a ball carrier akin to Juan Smith, and for a little luck here or there, their season could have ended very different.

Now to the Cinderella team of SA Rugby, there was a lot of talk pre season with new investors, new coach & new ideas, but yet mostly the same players, inexperienced tinged with one or two stalwarts such as Doppies la Grange and Jano Vermaak, and even the very experienced slightly over the hill Wickus van Heerden.

If there is one positive that can be taken out of the Lion’s season, it is the favour they did the Sharks and Bulls by taking the scalp of the Highlanders, that loss by the Highlanders basically ended their campaign, the loss of confidence after that match was evident in the lack of intensity during the remainder of their season.

You may ask why I am writing this Article, and where am I going with it. Well, the truth of the matter is that halfway through this Super Rugby season, I had visions of despair and frustration at seeing no form, little skill, very little intensity, variation or hope that we could achieve anything.

At one stage it looked like only the Stormers may qualify for the play-off’s, and that would have been disasterous for SA rugby. It would dictate that we had no depth and no idea how to play the modern game of rugby.

But now I feel that over the past 8 weeks we have turned the table, players almost certain to go to the World Cup are starting to find form, confidence and shows intensity, hey even Wynand Olivier this weekend passed the ball twice, and guess what happened, those passes resulted in two tries for the Bulls.

In the last 8 weeks we won 13 out of 17 encounters against the Antipodean teams, whereas in the first half of the tournament we only won 8 out of 23 encounters.

Now if that is not a great turn around of form, then I don’t know what is.

The question now remains, will Peter de Villiers have seen or learnt anything about this turn around, will he stick to his conservative, predictable game plan, or will he realise that there are skills in these franchises and that we can play a balanced game. If he can harnass the defensive organisation of the Stormers, the kicking game of the Bulls, the running game of the Cheetahs, and the physicality of the Bulls and Sharks, into a well balanced act, we might just pull off a surprise in the not too distant future.