Ken Borland

–

Those people who have portrayed the Knights as a franchise in freefall have ignored the valid reasons, and gross misfortune, which afflicted their performances this summer, according to chief executive officer Johan van Heerden.

The Knights finished fifth in the Sunfoil Series, winning just two of their 10 matches, and fourth in the Momentum One-Day Cup, winning three of their 10 games. But those figures fail to take into account the horrendous run of injuries and bad weather that stalked the central franchise almost throughout the season.

Living in Bloemfontein or Kimberley, one doesn’t expect prolonged bouts of rain, but the Knights had two home One-Day Cup matches abandoned without a ball being bowled, leaving them an agonising one point short of a playoff place.

In the four-day competition, the Knights opened their campaign by having the better of a draw against the defending champion Titans in Kimberley, but then had matches washed out on successive weekends in Paarl, Pietermaritzburg and East London.

Once they could get on the field, the Knights were actually in reasonable form and, strangely enough, the only two Sunfoil Series matches they lost were in Bloemfontein, against the Warriors and the Cape Cobras.

As if the weather was not a bad enough blow to the hopes of the franchise, it also suffered an extraordinary run of injuries.

Morne van Wyk scored a century and Reeza Hendricks a half-century in that opening match against the Titans, but it would be the last game they played as the veteran wicketkeeper/batsman badly injured his shoulder and the young top-order prospect broke his ankle.

With Dean Elgar often on national duties, it meant the Knights had lost almost their entire first-choice top-order.

“Serious injuries hit us. We had the whole season planned but then we had to go without key players like Morne van Wyk and Reeza Hendricks. Those are quality players who are extremely important to our set-up,” Van Heerden said.

“Unfortunately, their replacements were not able to front up and Rilee Rossouw and Obus Pienaar became our most senior batsmen. But they are still struggling with things in their own games and that’s why we were 25 for four too often. If the other top-four batsmen had been there, it would have taken the pressure off them.”

Pace bowlers Quinton Friend and Dillon du Preez also suffered injuries at inopportune times, and Ryan McLaren was also often absent with the national team.

But the good news after a tough season in Bloemfontein and Kimberley is that all but two of their players have opted for the safety of renewing their contracts with the Knights.

Unfortunately, the two players leaving are both batsmen – Van Wyk and Ryan Bailey.

Van Wyk has been a great servant of Knights cricket and is the franchise’s leading run-scorer with over 4000 runs, but he will be relocating to Durban.

“Morne has never left Bloemfontein, he never played county cricket, and he believes he has maybe two years left in his career, so he just wants to play in a different area,” Van Heerden explained.

And Bailey, whose double-century in the opening round of Sunfoil Series matches accounted for over half of his total runs and he only managed 71 runs in six innings in the One-Day Cup, declined a one-year contract from the Knights and will take up a two-year offer from the Eastern Cape Warriors instead.

These departures – and the fact that the likes of Johan van der Wath and Du Preez are also coming to the end of their careers – would be a real pain in the neck for Van Heerden, were it not for the really cosy situation the Knights are in in terms of the talent coming through just below franchise level.

The Free State team have excelled in the amateur competitions, mounting a strong challenge in the three-day league, reaching the final of the one-day tournament and making an unbeaten start to the T20s.

The likes of Gihahn Cloete, Rudi Second, Michael Erlank, Patrick Botha and Corne Dry have already featured in the Knights team, while Pite van Biljon, Duanne Olivier, Keagan Rafferty and Romano Terblanche are waiting in the wings.

“The youngsters can see that there are spots opening up for them and the policy of the board is that if two players are on an equal footing, then we go for the younger player. We have a youth policy for the franchise and we want to lure youngsters here, we have great arrangements for that in place with the University of the Free State and the Central University of Technology,” Van Heerden said.

An example of this is the Ewie and Hansie Cronje Project which provides a bursary for a promising cricketer and student to study at UFS.

“The bursary pays for three years’ study and pocket money and their equipment is paid for too. They must be athletic and have the potential to study further, because we believe people who qualify with a degree become better decision-makers.

“It provides specialised training and physical monitoring for young fast bowlers and it was the idea of Paul Harris [the top banker], especially the scientific side, and he has funded it along with Johann Rupert and Rembrandt,” Van Heerden explained.

The excellent schools in the region are still providing the talent, with Diego Rosier and Rafferty being recent SA U19 captains and either of them could be playing for the Knights next summer.

The mood is certainly positive in the central region, despite the hardships of the last summer and the bigger picture is healthy, according to Van Heerden.

Dawie van der Walt held off the challenge of the in-form Darren Fichardt to win the inaugural Tshwane Open and claim the first major tour title of his career at the Els Club Copperleaf on Sunday.

The 6’5” Van der Walt shot a 67 in the final round to finish the co-sanctioned European/Sunshine tour event on 21-under-par, two strokes ahead of Fichardt, the new Order of Merit leader who won the Africa Open two weeks ago and finished in the top-10 last week at the Dimension Data Pro-Am.

Van der Walt began the final round in a four-way tie for the lead with compatriots Fichardt and Charl Coetzee and Chilean Mark Tullo. And the 30-year-old was under some early pressure as both Fichardt and Coetzee birdied the second and third holes.

But the Paarl product made his move on the par-five fourth hole, which began the tournament as the longest in European Tour history at 626m. With the tees moved forward on Sunday, a player of Van der Walt’s length was able to reach the green in two and he nailed the 15-foot putt for eagle.

Birdies followed on the sixth and seventh holes and, although there was a bit of a wobble around the turn, Van der Walt sealed the biggest victory of his career with further birdies at the par-four 12^th and par-five 15^th holes.

There is no secrecy when it comes to what made Van der Walt successful around Copperleaf. Hitting the ball long is always useful at the Centurion course, but the U.S.-based golfer was impressively precise off the tee and especially with his irons.

“Lately I haven’t been hitting the ball so good, I’ve been playing terribly, but I found something in my swing at the Dimension Data and I felt something in my game coming here. I hit the ball really well and I missed just two fairways today and one green. It meant I hardly had to chip at all and that’s not my strength.

“It’s unbelievable to play well and win. Golf is a game where you don’t get many chances to win, some people never do, and often you play well and don’t win,” Van der Walt said.

The genial giant said his victory was all about goal-setting and not getting distracted by the bigger picture.

“I just wanted to play solid, I was aiming for five-under today and 10-under for the weekend, which worked out well. I’ve been in these situations a couple of times and if you think ahead you lose it. I just set a goal of being 10-under for the weekend and that would ensure I make a whole lot of money. I didn’t think it would be enough to win the tournament, but I would have taken second. I didn’t want to get ahead of myself,” Van der Walt admitted after shooting a pair of five-under-par 67s to finish the tournament on top.

It certainly did earn the six-year pro a whole lot of money – R2,781,675 to be precise, which translates into €237,750, considerably more than the €148,974 he had won in total on the European Tour before Sunday.

Van der Walt campaigns on the Web.com Tour in America, the level below the PGA Tour and formerly known as the Nationwide or Challenge Tour, and it presents the Kingwood, Texas resident with a conundrum in terms of where to play now that he has a two-year exemption on the lucrative European Tour.

“It definitely helps that the purses are a lot bigger in Europe! But I live in America now and I have full status on the Web.com Tour. My ultimate goal is to get on the PGA Tour but I can make my own schedule now and maybe I can go through the European Tour, that might be a lot easier,” Van der Walt said.

Van der Walt has four victories on satellite tours in the U.S., but a regular tour triumph had eluded him until Sunday. He admitted that there were times when he sat eating his cornflakes and wondering when the breakthrough would come.

“I’ve been a pro for six years and this is the first time I’ve won a big event. You see your friends doing it, you see other people winning, and you wonder when it will happen for you, whether it will ever happen for you, you wonder if you’re good enough.”

Fichardt finished at 19-under 269 and his third birdie, at the par-three fifth hole, gave him the lead on his own. But at that stage the putter went cold and 13 successive pars meant Van der Walt remained at arm’s length.

Louis de Jager shot a 69 on Sunday to finish third on 18-under, with former world number one amateur Peter Uihlein fourth on 17-under, the American also notching a three-under-par final round.

Sweden’s Bjorn Akesson, with a 65 on Sunday, Englishman Danny Willett (66) and Coetzee, who picked up a one-shot penalty for slow play at the 15^th, were tied for fifth at 16-under.

Tullo, the other overnight leader, fell away badly with a 77 which included a double-bogey 6 at the 13^th, where he twice hit into the water left of the green.

Van der Walt, meanwhile, tempered his attacking instincts with the sort of composure that turns the contenders into the champions. He showed this on the final hole when he took less club for his second shot to cater “for the adrenaline”.

The horrors of recent weeks – he said his father suggested he visit a sports psychologist, to which he replied “he’s not going to be able to tell me I’m hitting the ball straight when it’s going sideways” – are now a distant memory.

What is still fresh in Van der Walt’s mind though is the long, hard road he had to take to the podium at the Els Club Copperleaf.

“Playing on the mini-tours, where you have to pay your own fees, makes you hard. I have the instinct to win, every time I play, I’m trying to win,” the newest South African European Tour winner said.

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-03-04-tshwane-open-dawie-van-der-walt-wins-by-sticking-to-his-guns/#.UpnR4NIW29B

So was the Sharks/Stormers match an intense, gripping local derby between two powerful sides or an error-strewn bore-fest that should alarm all those concerned with the health of South African rugby?

You will find supporters for either option, and an array of shades in between, with the 12-6 victory to the Sharks proving highly entertaining for those purists who have an appreciation for Test rugby.

You probably won’t find a more brutal, physical game of rugby in this year’s competition, with the Stormers’ defence at its famous best and the Sharks not giving an inch either.

But while both defences were rock-solid and the two packs thundered into each other from close range, the two coaches, John Plumtree and Allister Coetzee, may want to consider whether they ever tried to move their points of attack away from the edges of the ruck.

Sure, the ball may have been slippery due to the humidity and the high stakes may have forced them both to play the percentages, but the overall impression was that the skills of the players (and we know they have them) were being stifled.

Never mind kicking for position, the boot was also over-used in attacking situations and, with the two sides’ similar game plans cancelling each other out, all innovation and finer skill was choked out of the contest.

The Sharks’ triumph was built on the supremacy of their scrum. Stormers fans will perhaps complain that referee Jonathan Kaplan was hard on them with a string of penalties for hinging (shoulders below the hips), but Tendai Mtawarira and Jannie du Plessis, on the auspicious occasion of his 100^th SuperRugby game, were clearly on top of their younger opponents in the Stormers’ front row.

With the result of the match hinging on just two penalties, those scrum infringements were crucial, allowing the Sharks to kick the Stormers back into their own territory.

“The Stormers hit you so hard that you can go away from your plan and then you end up on the back foot. So we just had to be patient, everything was about pressure out there and it came down to who could cope with it,” Plumtree said after the game.

If you like your rugby simple and bloody then the Loftus Versfeld clash between the Bulls and the Western Force also had much to offer.

The Bulls are famous for not playing with any airs or graces and the Force, written off by most after their stunning upset at the hands of the Southern Kings, took the hosts on at their own game and were actually better at it for long periods.

In the rarefied atmosphere of Loftus Versfeld, visitors need a kicker who can match the Bulls’ aerial bombardment and the Force had the big boot of Sias Ebersohn, a refugee from the Cheetahs.

The Force led 26-19 after the hour mark but sadly could not even hold on to gain a losing bonus point as the Bulls scored twice in the last 10 minutes.

The Bulls are a schizophrenic side at times, showing some superb attacking skills in setting up tries for Morné Steyn, in the second minute, and the impressive debutant wing, Sampie Mastriet, as well as a disallowed try by Bjorn Basson. But then for long periods they would revert back to 10-man rugby, with the boot dominating.

But in the 52^nd minute, the Bulls were sorry they didn’t take a kick at goal from a penalty right in front, opting to set up the lineout instead. But the Force defended superbly, stopping the rolling maul and then getting off their line quickly to force a turnover.

Moments later, lock Toby Lynn was burrowing over the tryline and leaving the Loftus crowd sadly contemplating defeat, conned into believing the Force were also-rans, despite the fact that they had won three of their six previous encounters with the Bulls.

Bulls coach Frans Ludeke confided to the media afterwards that he felt the first-half display had been their worst performance in five years, but he would also have been thrilled by the way his team pulled themselves together in the last 15 minutes and returned to their strengths.

Their tightly-knit rolling maul earned another impressive debutant, replacement flank Jean Cook, a try, and prop Werner Kruger then scored in the shadow of the poles in the final movement of the game.

“The way we came back in the second half, the way players adjusted on the field, that was a special effort from the team,” Ludeke said.

“Last year against the Blues we were in exactly the same situation, we couldn’t get out of that grip and tonight we got back. All credit to the captain [Pierre Spies] for the way he got us back to things that are working for us, the maul started working, we managed the high ball, we forced some turnovers and we converted pressure into points,” he added.

Converting pressure into points is exactly what the Cheetahs failed to do in the first half of their match against the Chiefs in Hamilton as flyhalf Johan Goosen continued to struggle.

He missed three penalties in the first half as the Cheetahs dominated territory and possession, and then had a clearance kick charged down early in the second half as the Chiefs extended their 10-3 half-time lead to 17-3.

All Blacks flyhalf-in-waiting Aaron Cruden then took over as he set up brilliant tries by Asaeli Tikoirotuma and Gareth Anscombe to ensure the defending champions notched a convincing bonus-point victory.

A lot has been said about how the Cheetahs are such a wonderful attacking side, but merely throwing the ball from side to side does not constitute great running rugby. Just throwing the ball wide is as one-dimensional as the worst fare dished up by the Stormers, Sharks and Bulls over the weekend and it was comfortably handled by the Chiefs.

The home side used their forwards on attack to suck in the defence, before going wide and the Cheetahs have to learn to earn the right to throw the ball around.

It’s all very well just hurling the ball out wide, but defences are cracked by the sort of skills Cruden and Anscombe showed in that superb try: changes of direction, great hands, scissors-movements and different running lines.

There was no sign of that sort of skill from the South African teams in action this weekend, which meant the wins of the Sharks and Bulls were greeted with no great fanfare.

Nobody is writing them – or even the Stormers – off at this early stage, but there is no doubt there is plenty of work to do for Messrs Plumtree, Ludeke and Coetzee.

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-03-04-superrugby-wrap-unattractive-victories-by-sharks-and-bulls-win-few-fans/#.UeRI79I3A6w