Ken Borland

The Bulls acknowledge that Saturday’s United Rugby Championship quarterfinal against the Sharks at Loftus Versfeld is a 50/50 game, but they will go into the knockout clash with fresh minds and bodies, happy with the rugby they are playing.

Walt Steenkamp has had a pleasing impact in the No.4 jersey since joining the Bulls from the Free State Cheetahs in November 2020, and he said the pack are so content with how they are operating as a unit that they are even happy to see the backs score all the tries!

“The team relies a lot on us for front-foot ball and it was nice to see only backs scoring against Ospreys in our last match, so we can give the credit to them,” Steenkamp said with a smile on Tuesday.

“We have played so much rugby this year, so the break since then has given us the chance to rest our sore bodies. And myself and Ruan Nortje have enjoyed a good combination at lock.

“They always say altitude matters, but the Sharks have played here a lot, they would have prepared for it, plus they come from a place with high humidity, so it’s a 50/50 game.

“But playing finals rugby is about having a mindset change, because if you lose then you’re out. So we have to give 100% and Jake White is a great coach who knows how to play finals rugby,” Steenkamp said.

The Bulls have lost both their URC matches against the Sharks this season, largely due to some terrible discipline and getting a mauling in the scrums. Those are the two areas Steenkamp highlighted as requiring improvement on Saturday.

“The Sharks lineout and scrum is good, but we have plans for them,” Steenkamp said. “We have conceded four or five penalties a game at scrum time against them, so we’ve worked hard on that.

“You get different interpretations at the scrums, so we plan for the referees as well and try and show them good pictures.

“But also, the last time we played the Sharks, we played 60 minutes with 14 men because of a red card, so discipline is also very important.

“The Sharks pack is always very good as a whole, there are no weaknesses. But we think we can put pressure there. It’s finals rugby, but we will still stick to what works for us,” Steenkamp said.

The Central Gauteng Lions endured a tough 2021/22 season with Proteas and SA A call-ups decimating their line-up, and one could only feel sympathy for Malusi Siboto, their stalwart seam bowler who had to carry the attack when so many bowlers were missing.

Across the four-day competition, the triumphant 50-over One-Day Cup campaign and the two T20 tournaments, the Lions played 24 matches last season and Siboto played in every one of them. He bowled the most overs in the four-day tournament, 151.4, and took 24 wickets at an average of just 14, spearheading a challenge for the title that only faltered in the final round.

The 34-year-old Siboto was also their leading T20 wicket-taker, while conceding runs at just 7.39 per over. So it was a fitting act of appreciation when he was crowned as the CGL Player of the Year at the weekend.

For his part, Siboto admitted that he was “very tired” but he said the responsibility of being a senior player had carried him through.

“For me, the big key was that element of making sure the younger players were ready. As a senior player, you have to step up and make sure the others follow you and that you play as a team.

“The stats are not important for me and I didn’t feel more pressure out on the field. It was more about mindset, being aware of the smaller things, those situations that can be game-changing.

“Whatever happens, you have to trust all the players to execute. So I didn’t feel there was any pressure on me to perform, it was more about making sure all the players are on the same page.

“At times it seems like you’re bowling for someone else. And then you just have to make sure they’re aware, someone like Codi Yusuf had Sisanda Magala and I always in his ear,” Siboto told The Citizen.

Siboto has now played 244 matches across the formats in domestic first division cricket. He moved from the Knights to the Titans in 2016/17 and then to the Lions in 2018/19. He has never failed to be a consistent, skilful performer at that level, certainly one of the most effective bowlers in the local game.

Although his only taste of international cricket came with eight matches for SA A between 2016 and 2019, he is not going to give up on his dream of playing for the Proteas.

“I am ready to play for the Proteas, I’ve been bringing it year-in, year-out and my SA A games were a long time ago. I am fit and working hard and always growing. I’m learning something new every season.

“Next season again, I will just try to be consistent, do the basics right, that’s all I can control.

“At the Titans, there was an element of there being no comfort zone, we were all working hard to win trophies and build a legacy.

“At the Lions, it’s a different ball-game because half the team is so young and new. So it’s a matter of also making sure those younger guys flourish,” Siboto said.

Stormers great Bob Skinstad played 24 Tests in South Africa’s No.8 jersey and he believes his former team’s current eighthman, Evan Roos, has much to offer in a Springboks squad.

Roos is an integral part of the Stormers team that will be playing in the United Rugby Championship quarterfinals this weekend, hosting Edinburgh in Cape Town, but he will also be thinking about the possibility of being named in the Springbok squad for the first time. National coach Jacques Nienaber has said he will only announce his squad once the playoffs are over.

Skinstad, who played 42 Tests in all and was one of the best ball-players South African rugby has ever seen, said on Monday that he is thrilled by the expansive rugby the Stormers backs are playing, but said it is inspired by the work of the forwards on their inside.

“I love watching the Stormers matches because they are playing such great counter-attacking rugby. They’re trying to win by scoring more points than the opposition, rather than by just squeezing them.

“Leolin Zas is the leading try-scorer in the competition and an amazing finisher, but he’s doing it off the breaks of the players inside him. The beauty of the Stormers’ play is the linking between their carrying forwards.

“Like Evan Roos, who gets those extra three or four metres and then puts in the little offload, which can really break open the game. He also brings ball-carrying in the wide channels and is very hard to stop from five metres out.

“Evan would be an asset for the Springboks, although he won’t just necessarily burst into the starting line-up. But he can certainly add value in and around the squad, or even off the bench,” Skinstad, who is part of the Premier Sports broadcast team for the URC, said.

With more peace in the Western Province RFU boardroom these days and the team having done so well in the URC, Skinstad also said the Stormers, with an eye on the European Champions Cup next season, should be prime candidates for the sort of equity partners that have elevated the Sharks and Bulls.

“The Stormers have been in a bit of a state of flux lately, but their results have not been bad now, so there is a germ of real value there. If I was a big sports group I would really think there’s incredible value there.

“They have an incredible player base, school system, stadium and Cape Town is an amazing place,” Skinstad said.

One can learn so many life lessons from sport and I am convinced that more can be learned from golf than most other codes. My own golf is certainly a lesson in dealing with frustration and how to extricate oneself from seemingly unreachable positions.

But professional golf, especially the Majors, provides such human drama and, as in life, disaster or glorious success seem just as likely to occur on the next hole.

Last weekend in the PGA Championship at Southern Hills, Mito Pereira was one hole away from one of the most astounding Major triumphs. He had seemingly beaten off numerous, way more experienced and storied challengers, on a chaotic final day to stand on the 18^th tee clinging to a one-stroke lead. All he needed was a par to become one of the rare rookies, playing just his second Major championship, to win on one of golf’s grandest stages.

The 27-year-old from Santiago, Chile, decided to go the aggressive route, and hit Driver. Except he made an awful swing and deposited his ball in the creek down the right, leading to a double-bogey. Not only was Pereira no longer at the top of the leaderboard, he wasn’t even in the playoff that would decide the fate of the Wanamaker Trophy, Justin Thomas eventually emerging as the champion.

When Pereira decided to take the risky route on the last, you could almost hear Sir Nick Faldo tearing his hair out in the commentary box. The man who famously made 18 pars to win the first of his six Major championships in the 1987 Open at Muirfield, could not fathom why the leader had not just played it safe.

It was a most frustrating end to what would have been a fairytale win. I have no doubt Pereira just went with Driver because it had worked before.

While sympathy for his cruel fate was the over-riding emotion, it does anger me when highly-talented sportspeople justify poor decision-making by saying things like “that’s just the way I play, that’s my game.”

Just as the rest of us have to adapt to the various challenges and frustrations of life, so sports stars have to adapt to their circumstances. Play the situation!

If you’re roaring to victory by four shots, or your team is 370/3 or 30-7 up, by all means be aggressive. But the truly great sports heroes are able to tailor their game to whatever the situation, or their team, requires in order to win.

For now, Pereira will be walking the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, but he certainly showed he has game and I will be surprised if he does not win on the PGA Tour, once he gets over this heartbreak. Most importantly, how he handled the devastating blow has been widely acclaimed and he fronted up to the media after his round when all he would have wanted was to go and hide away somewhere. Dealing with failure is another life lesson, of course.

Long-form sports, where the tension is gradually ramped up before it reaches a tremendous crescendo on the final day, are right up my street. Golf’s Majors, and especially the Ryder Cup, are still such compelling viewing even in an age where the cancer of instant gratification seems to reign supreme.

Golf can be just as slow as Test cricket, but the feeling of that tension building as you reach the final round is a bit like a Hitchcock horror movie – a masterful building of suspense.

Sport needs to have good stories, as well as the best players in the world in the limelight. How good was it to have an unknown like Pereira challenging for what would have been an incredible win in the PGA Championship?

Even though he was pipped in the end by one of the world’s best in Thomas, it was still wonderfully dramatic.

Test cricket can perhaps learn its own life lessons from golf. It can provide just as much drama, but it needs to be properly packaged, marketed and looked after by the ICC.