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.

The Sharks are currently in fourth position on the Currie Cup log and notwithstanding the Free State/Western Province match being the showpiece clash of the weekend, when Griquas rock up at Kings Park on Saturday afternoon, the home side will be involved in just as much of a do-or-die clash as the two teams in Bloemfontein.

The Free State Cheetahs are the team in fifth, one point behind the Sharks, so obviously the KwaZulu-Natalians cannot afford to slip up against the bottom side on the log. Especially since they play Western Province at Newlands in the last round of fixtures. Western Province have their own pressures because they could finish anywhere from first to fifth, and out of the semi-finals, depending on their results in the next fortnight.

Just to add to the pressure on the Sharks’ they are currently dealing with a Covid outbreak and with some players coming back and others testing positive, coach Sean Everitt has been forced to change the majority of his team over the last few weeks. And it has shown in heavy defeats on the road to the Lions and the Cheetahs.

Everitt was doing his best to paint a positive picture on Thursday.

“This team has had a good week’s preparation, they are very tough on themselves and they have high standards, they know they have not delivered the standards of performance we expect over the last two weeks. But it’s easily identifiable what went wrong against the Cheetahs and we know Griquas are always a massive challenge as well.

“They always run teams close and I feel they were unfortunate not to beat the Lions and Western Province. We have no doubt what they will bring, they are desperate as well and obviously motivated to knock over one of the big four. So we are under no illusions, we know it is going to be a physical battle and a big duel at set-piece. But our team is determined to bounce back,” Everitt said on Thursday.

Desperation, motivation, physicality and set-piece prowess are also all the sort of properties the Pumas, those other ‘minnows’ of the Currie Cup, will bring to their match against the Lions on Saturday, especially since they are playing in Nelspruit.

While the Lions are rightfully wary of their neighbours, they are also targeting a bonus point win because that could make a massive difference in their hunt for a home semi-final. Ivan van Rooyen’s team are currently in third place, two points behind Western Province and six behind log-leaders the Bulls.

Momentum is with the Lions and they are also quite fortunate in terms of player availability, with in-form prop Sti Sithole probably their only first-choice player who is out injured at the moment.

Danie van Tonder continued to provide free tuition out on the golf course to his fellow Sunshine Tour pros on the art of winning as he claimed the Vodacom Championship Reloaded title by four strokes at Huddle Park on Friday, his third trophy in the five-event Rise Up Series.

It has been an extraordinary run of form for the 29-year-old, Van Tonder becoming the first player to win three times in one Sunshine Tour season since Oliver Bekker in 2017, and he has certainly learnt how to win with something that is now approaching monotonous regularity.

Going into the final round at Huddle Park with a three-stroke lead after a 40-foot eagle on his last hole in he second round, Van Tonder immediately took control on Friday with a birdie at the par-four first hole. An eagle on the sixth and a birdie on the ninth, the two par-fives, completed the perfect front nine when leading, and he ended the round with a six-under 66, playing immaculate, bogey-free golf.

“Everyone wants to try and win every time they play, I wanted to win five-out-of-five, but it’s very hard in this profession. But I had to teach myself the right mentality on the course, I do get cross but now I try to use that to my advantage, hitting the ball further and straighter. I’m very aggressive out there and I just try and make the impossible possible. I’m very happy because I’ve been working and practising hard and I’ve played good golf,” Van Tonder said on Friday after winning another R95 100, which saw him top the Rise Up Series order of merit by more than R132 000 from second-placed Darren Fichardt, who missed the cut at Huddle Park.

While Van Tonder’s game-plan is to simply overpower golf courses, he also had the gall on Friday to not drop a single shot, in fact he made just one bogey the whole tournament, despite his aggressive approach. It was telling that Jaco Ahlers won the Betway Birdie Challenge for the Rise Up Series, with 79 across the five tournaments, but could only finish second on Friday despite shooting a superb 65. The difference is that while Van Tonder ‘only’ made 77 birdies, he is eliminating the mistakes that separate the winner from the also-rans.

“To have three wins, I have no words, and I knew I had to make birdies today because Jaco played very well. Fortunately I don’t hit the ball so skew, I hit it as hard as I can and straight, and I’ve always made lots of birdies. But I saw that my mistake was making bogeys as well, and so many of those are unnecessary bogeys.

“To shoot 21-under-par shows that I’m not making bogeys, there are always birdies out there. My chipping has also always been good, I have a 63⁰ lob-wedge and when I have that in my hand I feel like I have an 80% chance of chipping in,” Van Tonder said.

Brazilian veteran Adilson da Silva shared second place with Ahlers on 17-under after shooting a 66, while Jacques Blaauw finished in fourth on 16-under and rookie Malcolm Mitchell was one stroke further back after both of them closed with 68s.

Many professional cricketers have suffered the indignity of not having their contracts renewed, but very few have rebounded and proven their former employees made a mistake as rapidly and emphatically as Eldred Hawken.

A year ago, the fast bowler who hails from Limpopo had been let go by the Titans and was contemplating playing club cricket in Johannesburg because at least he had family he could stay with in the city. But at the weekend Hawken was named both the Lions’ Player of the Year and the Players’ Player of the Year after his key role in the franchise defending their four-day title and being their best seamer in the Momentum One-Day Cup.

“It has definitely all caught me by surprise. When I lost my contract last year I felt hard done by and defeated. But my old man took me out to golf and said I should give professional cricket one more year, I had managed to build up some savings and he said he would cover me if I needed more. But I felt my future wasn’t moving forward in cricket,” the 31-year-old told The Citizen on Monday.

“I had tried to find a franchise contract somewhere with my agent, but it’s not easy. But Northerns coach Mark Charlton is a good mate and his opinion was that I should keep going, we did some one-on-one work and he said I should play some club cricket in Johannesburg and you never know where it will go. So I was living out of a suitcase, moving between relations, it was a crazy time,” Hawken said.

Having signed with Old Edwardians, Hawken had yet to play a game for them when North-West coach Monty Jacobs phoned him and asked if he was interested in playing first-class cricket for the Potchefstroom-based team. What followed on October 31 at Senwes Park was a pure sporting miracle as Hawken took nine for 14 against Easterns, who had won the toss and elected to bat. Not many have recorded better bowling figures, in fact they are the fourth best in South African first-class history.

“Monty was great to me, he said when I feel like training I must come through to Potch. I did pretty well but then North-West did not play in December and I was on three weeks holiday in Tzaneen when Lions coach Wandile Gwavu phoned to say they needed bowlers and I must come through for a few training sessions the next week.

“I guess taking those nine wickets in an innings said they must take notice of me, it got me into the mix. And then I took five wickets on debut against the Titans, I was man of the match, we won the game and the Lions just backed me from then on, I played every game,” Hawken said.

The wiry Merensky High School product is a bowler blessed with the ability to swing the ball late and, when he is on song, has wrecked many a batting line-up as a first-class record of 205 wickets in 53 matches at an average of just 21 attests.

“I guess I just get hot at a particular moment, all of a sudden I feel things just snap together and I can create things, you just want to jump on it and ride it when that happens. But I felt like I was also a more consistent bowler last season and I’m trying to focus on that. My economy rate proves I am becoming more consistent. Before I lacked confidence in white-ball cricket.

“For the Titans I never really got into a rhythm of playing week in week out, every game I played you felt under heaps of pressure to impress and you still might not play the next match. My goal is still to play Test cricket for South Africa and I know I can get there; if I lose my belief that I can do it then that’s when I should hang up my boots. In the short-term I just want to be part of another season in which the Lions do well,” Hawken said.

As the last year of Hawken’s life has shown, cricket is a queer old game and, if he can produce another great franchise season, who knows where his journey will end?