Ken Borland

As the Currie Cup approaches what will hopefully be a thrilling end, there have been some apocalyptic comments about the poor quality of the rugby and how South Africa are allegedly once again miles behind the rest of the world.

People going on about the end of the world being nigh should generally be treated with some scepticism and it was good to hear Director of Rugby Rassie Erasmus provide some much-needed perspective this week. In case anyone has forgotten, our Currie Cup teams are trying to play rugby in the middle of a global pandemic.

Obviously the major focus is to ensure nobody contracts the virus, which means there is regular testing being done on the players. Covid tests are not particularly pleasant, but the effects of this pandemic do not end there.

While Covid has disrupted the lifestyles of so many, it has had a terrible effect on the structured preparation rugby players have become used to in the professional era. According to Erasmus, rugby teams normally spend 280-300 minutes training together in the week before a game. But due to Covid protocols, that figure has now dropped to less than half of that.

That’s because after a match on a Saturday, teams can only do their Covid tests on Tuesday morning, because 48 hours have to pass before testing, otherwise contact tracing would have to be done in terms of who had too much physical contact during the last match. That means teams cannot train on a Monday in case anyone is positive and spreads the virus through the squad.

The results are only returned on the Tuesday night, which means all the scrum, maul and breakdown work has to be done on the Wednesday. A team could train on the Thursday, but that’s two days before the game and coaches and conditioning experts often are a bit wary of doing that so close to a match.

Captain’s runs on a Friday are now also mostly a thing of the past. When one adds in the effect of teams only being selected in the second half of the week, and the absence of coaches and players from week-to-week due to positive tests, it is clear there has been an awfully disruptive effect on the preparations of teams.

Players who do test positive return to action via a detailed nine-day quarantine period and then, once they return a negative test, a return-to-play protocol that measures the effect of the virus on the body through tests on the heart, lungs and other vital organs. It works out to be about 16 days – the equivalent of two matches – away from the game.

And even players or coaches who test negative, but are deemed to be close contacts of someone who has the virus, have to quarantine for 10 days.

These players and coaches, who have all taken pay cuts as well, are at the vanguard of keeping the South African game afloat in far from ideal circumstances. They deserve our thanks and appreciation, not our opprobrium.

With competing in Europe on the horizon, it really is a brave new world in so many ways for our rugby players. They will need our support.

They are taking the hits on and off the field, it’s midsummer when they have never been playing before, and the good thing one can say about the Currie Cup this year is that it’s still as uncompromising as ever.

Saturday’s matches between the Bulls and Lions at Loftus Versfeld, and Western Province and the Sharks at Newlands, might not be thrilling in terms of dazzling running rugby, but for sheer intensity alone they will hopefully be enthralling to watch.