Ken Borland

Sharks coach Sean Everitt had much to consider when it came to selecting his team for their United Rugby Championship clash against the Glasgow Warriors at Scotstoun on Saturday; he needed to look at his side through the lenses of the fast-paced artificial pitch they are playing on, the opposition’s strong lineout, maul and breakdown work, and their powerful presence in the collisions.

In the end Everitt decided to bolster his lineout resources and give his pack more beef for those gainline collisions, moving a lock, Gerbrandt Grobler, to flank and recalling Ruben van Heerden to the starting line-up. Hyron Andrews remains as the lock reserve.

“When we recruited Gerbrandt it was with the dual positions of lock and flank in mind and, from a lineout point of view, he will bring a different dynamic at No.7, and we know Glasgow contest the lineouts very well with Richie Gray there,” Everitt said.

“Hyron and Ruben were our first-choice locks last year in Super Rugby and in the early stages of the Currie Cup, but unfortunately they both got injured. But they were both really good off the bench last week.

“The thing with the artificial pitch is that it makes the people quicker but it does not necessarily mean the game will be quicker. There will be more high-speed running than on grass, but we have trained and adapted well and I don’t see the pace of the game as a threat at all.

“Glasgow were originally coached by Dave Rennie so they play like a Super Rugby side, they bring a high tempo and a high-line defence, and they like to carry a lot. It’s a different threat and we just have to keep them out,” Everitt said.

While Munster were content to “suffocate and strangle” the Sharks last weekend, the Warriors are going to look to quickly counter-attack off every error and the Sharks are going to have to, as ever, improve their discipline and ball-retention.

“Conceding 17 penalties is not acceptable, although we were on the wrong side of a few 50/50s. But we need to adapt in the mauls and breakdowns and it’s a big learning curve.

“The European teams are really disciplined in how they execute their plans. I thought we played really well at times against Munster, but we paid for our errors.

“We are up against international players and if we don’t look after the ball then we will be punished dearly. The penalty count is also important, but that’s not hard to fix.

“We don’t want to be playing between the 10-metre lines, we need to manage the game better and limit our turnovers,” Everitt said.

Fence 3 at the Tokyo Olympics showjumping competition was called Kintsugi, “the golden splice”, celebrating the beauty of the scars of life or the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-Sabi.

Below the two poles were placed fractured ceramic discs and Kintsugi is a centuries-old technique in which these cracks are filled with an enamel sprinkled with gold, silver or platinum, turning the ‘scars’ into something beautiful. It is meant to evoke how imperfection can still be beautiful and valuable.

For leading South African showjumper Nicole Horwood, the United Aviation Group South African Derby that ends at the Kyalami Equestrian Park on Sunday has not been as perfect as the unmatched four previous editions she has won due to the Covid restrictions, but it is still nevertheless beautiful.

“It’s one of the events that every young rider aspires to win, and it always used to be a big social event too, it had plenty of appeal for the public. Winning it gave you the most exposure and it’s one of the titles I most cherish,” Horwood told Saturday Citizen.

“It’s usually quite a spectacle, but with limited tickets and no big crowd, it’s not quite the same. Normally there’s an electric atmosphere and the crowd carries you over the fences, they seem to ride every jump with you.

“But the United Aviation Group have put so much into the Derby, getting it live on SuperSport, so in terms of public exposure it’s probably the biggest and best ever, and UAG have had a lot to do with that.”

Three of Horwood’s four SA Derby titles came in consecutive years – 2012-2014 – joining the legendary Mickey Louw as the only other rider to pull off a hat-trick of titles in one of South Africa’s showjumping Majors. Horwood won the Triple Crown of the Derby, SA Championships and SA Outdoor Grand Prix in 2013.

The real estate agent’s steady flow of titles mostly came aboard Capital Don Cumarco, considered one of the great horses in South African showjumping history, but the famous stallion retired a year ago. Horwood is riding United Aviation Group Capital Hitoshi and United Aviation Group Capital Kronos this weekend at Kyalami and, while they are inexperienced and have just put one figurative foot in the water compared to Don Cumarco wading through the rivers of success, she has great expectations for both rides.

“I have very high hopes for some of the young horses I’m riding now. Showjumping is about constantly developing horses, and in a few more years I’ll be grooming ones to take their places. That’s my motivation to keep competing, to bring good young horses up to that level.

“Capital Don Cumarco and myself were like a team though, we really understood each other, we had a great bond. He was a legend who put me on the map, I rode him from when he was five to 18 years old, it was like he was living my life with me, and he is the only horse to win the Derby four times. Now he is enjoying the sun at Summerhill Stud,” Horwood said.

The 48-year-old Horwood says enjoying developing a relationship with your horse is a critical part of showjumping success because it is not all sunshine and roses.

“I had nothing but a pony growing up and I don’t own any horses, they are all sponsored. But to succeed you have to work hard and show your talent through your work ethic and motivation. You need to learn from your mistakes, take your ego out of it.

“You have to be passionate about it because it is a lot of work, but the journey is worth it. It takes a bit of talent too, you need skills and horsemanship and a bond with your horse,” Horwood said.

While her rides are officially just rentals, the one permanent feature in Horwood’s career has been her coach – the legendary Gonda Betrix, whose immense career saw her win 10 Majors and represent South Africa at the 1992 Olympics.

“Growing up in Durban, I only rode recreationally on a horse my Dad bought off the track at Kings Park Stables. I only started competing when I came to Joburg when I was 18 years old. All those years I have spent with Gonda and 30 years later she is still my coach. She taught me everything – the basics and especially work ethic,” Horwood said.

There is no honour amongst thieves, so the saying goes, and it seems there is also no end to the greed and selfishness that characterises international cricket. Little wonder then that even The Big Three are starting to box each other, never mind their deplorable treatment of the rest of the cricketing world.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the associated quarantine protocols have given teams an easy excuse not to fulfill their commitments. England’s disgraceful exit from their tour of South Africa last summer was the first sign that The Big Three would not be beholden to anyone, not even the International Cricket Council, when it came to their board or players doing whatever they wanted.

Australia also refused to come to South Africa when the science actually showed their reasons were totally flawed, and India recently did the dirty on England by pulling out of the last Test of their series on the morning of the game due to a couple of positive Covid tests in their tour party.

Never mind that the Indians were probably to blame because they had been out of the bubble attending coach Ravi Shastri’s book launch and what not.

Poor old Pakistan have the added disadvantage of always having the ‘security risk’ tag hanging over their heads and both New Zealand and England have unilaterally pulled out of tours there. They say it’s because of security threats but they have never informed their hosts exactly what those threats were, and it is telling that Britain’s own High Commission in Islamabad supported their tour going ahead.

And let’s not forget that Pakistan toured England last year, staying in crappy hotel bubbles, at the height of Covid when their hosts were desperate for cricket.

Now even the Ashes are at risk because the English players don’t want strict quarantine rules to apply to them and their families in Australia.

It has all just led to a great diminishing of the image of international cricket. The pre-eminence of country-versus-country contests no longer seems to be in place and the ICC, the very custodians of international cricket, don’t seem overly invested in protecting their turf.

Of course, the Indian Premier League towers over all other cricket like the Drakensberg peaks tower over the surrounding midlands. No player ever pulls out of that tournament and every single recent change to the international schedule has benefited the IPL. If the Indian players had played that last Test against England, some of them would have missed the first game of the resumed tournament in the UAE due to quarantine arrangements. And many of the same players who were terrified of Covid in South Africa quite happily went to India when the pandemic was killing thousands of people every day.

The ICC should be like an Alsatian in being the guardians of international cricket, instead they are a lap dog for The Big Three. The consequences of this will be T20 tournaments continuing to ransack the calendar space and the players that should be available to international competition.

If all this double-crossing and use-and-abuse treatment of the poorer nations is allowed to continue, I can see franchise cricket overwhelming the international game. The ICC will limp along as a toothless body holding world cups every few years.

Lovers of T20 will be delighted as that format will dominate the calendar even more, but traditional cricket fans, especially lovers of the Test game, will be left angry and disinterested.

At the moment, those with the power in cricket all seem to just want to chow down at the banquet table without any consideration for those who produce or serve the feast. It is this greed and selfishness that is destroying the game.

Unless there is a sea-change in mindset and cricket gets some non-selfserving leadership in place, it will be a case of bad luck to the poorer nations as the rich get richer and the rest simply fade away.

Springbok captain Siya Kolisi admitted on Friday that only actions, not words, will convince their fans that the gains of the last couple of years are not being lost, and to make that sale they all need to be better as individuals against New Zealand on the Gold Coast on Saturday.

The Springboks, with Kolisi at the forefront, put in a massive effort last weekend against the All Blacks but still came up two points short, but not for the want of opportunities created by their impressive pressure game.

“I can’t say anything that will convince anyone, it’s only about the way we are playing and the effort we put in,” Kolisi said. “But it’s all about results, which we are not showing at the moment, but the effort and attitude are there.

“But it’s better to say “I did’ than to say ‘I said’. We just have to go out there and play, we are not giving up and hopefully our reward comes with a result.

“As individuals we all have to bring in our play, but the individual only wins when the team wins. So many individuals had great games last weekend but we still didn’t get the win.

“So we all want to be much better, get into as many battles as possible. We had so many opportunities to do better but there were just lapses in concentration. There’s nothing more we can say, it’s only our actions that count, our results and how we don’t give up,” Kolisi said.

South Africa showed last weekend that they have the raw materials to beat the All Blacks, but just the finishing touches were lacking.

“We brought the intensity, it showed that physically we are fine, but we just did not take the opportunities that were in front of us. Our focus is now on making sure we finish the tour strong and we are here to do a job.

“The game-plan will be the same as it’s always been because it gets us to where we want to be, now we need to take the opportunities in front of us. That’s why we kick, to get into positions where we can play rugby.

“It’s what we did at the World Cup, we played off turnovers and scored some great tries, but now we are just not taking those chances when we work ourselves in to perfect positions,” Kolisi said.