Ken Borland

Top South African golfer Justin Harding says he faces a predicament in arranging his schedule once professional golf resumes because he plays in both Europe and the United States and has to juggle their mussed up schedules with the quarantine and travel regulations of the various countries hosting events.

It is a problem facing many golfers as the U.S. PGA Tour hopes to resurrect their schedule on June 11 with the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial and the European Tour is supposedly going to start again at the end of July with a run of events in the United Kingdom. But many of the world’s top golfers hop between the European and American tours, which now becomes a logistical nightmare with all the quarantining and testing that will be required for international travel.

“The European Tour is going to try put on four or five weeks of action in the UK, and hopefully there will be reduced quarantine measures by the end of that otherwise it’s going to be a scheduling nightmare. If you want to play in America you have to go 14 days beforehand, and going to Europe you also need 14 days’ quarantine. The PGA Championship is scheduled for the second week of August, so if you play in the British Masters from July 23 then you miss the quarantine deadline.

“The Korn Ferry Tour [the secondary U.S. tour for which Harding has full status] sent out a 57-page memorandum on the different regulations for when they start on June 8, but I have no intention of playing a full schedule on that tour. I need the world ranking points from the European Tour, and it doesn’t make sense quarantining for six weeks just to play three tournaments,” Harding said in a recent Sunshine Tour virtual press conference.

And before one accuses the 34-year-old world number 111 of being lazy, it is a viewpoint shared by many other golfers and Harding has proven his credentials by playing all over the world in recent years. One trip to the United States that he is willing to make, however, is for the Masters, which has been rescheduled for November 12-15. Harding made an impressive debut at the Masters last year, finishing in a tie for 12^th just five shots behind winner Tiger Woods, earning himself an invitation for this year’s Major.

“I’m certainly happy that the Masters wasn’t cancelled like the Open Championship! I’m dying to go back again and I wasn’t in a great run of form when we stopped playing golf but hopefully I can go to Augusta in November and be competitive. It’s a very strategic course and you need to put the ball in the right places. But I have no idea what the course will be like at that time of year.

“I’m sure Augusta will look different, I think it will be quite firm after it was quite wet last year. It will also be the debuts of Erik van Rensburg and Christiaan Bezuidenhout there so that’s going to be good fun. I think they’re the most upset about golf being suspended because they were both flying! Whereas I had had a dip in form which I was trying to play through, so the 10-week break might be good for me,” Harding said.

The only words South African cricket all-rounder Albie Morkel was able to get through the cellphone to his wife Marthmari, before he was bundled into a car and driven to prison were “I’m going to be stuck in Mozambique for a little longer, there’s a problem but I can’t talk now because the guards are coming with their AK47s”.

The harrowing ordeal, which Morkel, one of South Africa’s most internationally famous cricketers thanks to his nine years in the Indian Premier League, describes as “the most horrific two days of my life”, began a couple of hours earlier when the 37-year-old arrived at Chingozi Airport in Tete, north-western Mozambique, after a tiger-fishing trip to the lower Zambezi River in July.

The incident had its genesis in a hunting trip Morkel, who is known for his love of the bush, went on a couple of weeks earlier. Upon his return, he asked his gardener to clean his car. When the gardener found a small packet of ammunition in the vehicle, he wasn’t sure what to do with it, so he put it in the side pocket of one of Morkel’s old cricket bags.

That was the bag Morkel thought would be perfect to put his fishing tackle in when he went to Mozambique. Getting through O.R. Tambo International Airport and arriving in Tete without any problems, the drama only started when the Pretoria-based cricketer was about to board his flight back to Johannesburg.

“It had been a fantastic trip and I was at the airport on my way back when the airport security found some ammunition in my bag that I didn’t know about. With the language barrier, things escalated very quickly into a very big mess. I told the other guys in our party to go ahead and board and I’ll just sort this problem out and catch the later flight.

“But two hours later I was in Tete provincial prison for the two most horrific days of my life. I was held for the serious criminal charge of weapons smuggling and nobody at the court was willing to help me before it closed at 3pm so I was taken to jail. The situation got a bit ugly when the guy helping me jostled one of the policemen a bit and out came the AK47s, I was pushed into a car and next thing I knew I was at the gates of the prison,” Morkel revealed on The Dan Nicholl Show on Wednesday night.

Morkel was fortunate to find the help of two inmates when his spirits were at their lowest.

“I’ve never been close to jail before and this place was just inhuman, 800 prisoners, some of them clearly mentally unstable, all together in an open prison in 45 degree heat. They were so crammed together that at night they would just relieve themselves on each other.

“Luckily I met a couple of guys in jail, Andrew was a computer tech guy from Malawi, who had been inside for six months because he couldn’t show his papers after they had had a few drinks in the pub, and the other guy had been there for 11 months after being arrested for selling cellphone batteries that the police thought he had stolen.

“They told me who I should stay away from and that the shade belonged to the main okes. Fortunately I was allowed to sleep alone in the office at night and five minutes before the jail closed on Friday afternoon for the weekend, my friends on the outside managed to get me out,” Morkel recalls.

Quite how they were able to dig a famous sportsman, whose name meant nothing in northern Mozambique, out of his predicament, remains unclear, but Morkel has a reasonable idea.

“They never got into how they managed to get me released, but they knew how the system works over there.”

https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/2009079/albie-morkel-tells-of-his-hell-in-mozambique-cell/

It’s a very important Test for the Springboks against Australia in Bloemfontein on Saturday because victory will take them to six wins out of eight matches and that obviously means they are heading for a very good year.

Heading into the last two home Tests of the year, the good news is that the Springboks have a good chance to finish second in the Rugby Championship. If they win their last two games, then they are heading for a very good year indeed!

But first they need to get through Australia, but they are playing one of the top four teams, so it’s a chance to go up the rankings.

Traditionally the Wallabies have always struggled at altitude – South Africa have won 14 of the last 15 games on the Highveld – but there’s obviously more to it than that. The Springbok forwards were really in control at the back end of the game in Perth, they scored a really good lineout drive try and their scrum was dominant, so those are real positives.

I expect the scrum to go well again and garner penalties like they did at Loftus Versfeld last year and in Perth, and I expect the lineout maul to dominate when in good field positions. Hooker Malcolm Marx remains a helluva talent and the Springboks will definitely produce a better lineout performance. New Zealand have one heck of a competing lineout and it wasn’t the first time they’ve dismantled an opposition lineout and it won’t be the last.

So the Springboks should have different quality ball for the halfbacks and having Ross Cronje back and fit will definitely be a big help for Elton Jantjies.

In terms of any scarring from the 57-0 hammering in Albany, after a big loss the hardest thing is that the confidence takes a knock. It wasn’t the best day for the players or the coaches and they’ve got to regain trust in the system. It’s a good thing that they had a week off to clear the mind and Allister Coetzee needs to look at people who can bounce back and deliver a great performance.

The stakes are so high and there’s such immense pressure to perform at national level that the players will have real feelings of shame. They know how great the support is and how high the expectations are because the Springboks are one of the country’s flagship sporting teams.

It was obviously a great disappointment, but that all goes when they step back on to the training field and they’re back to normality. But there will still be that little bit of doubt in the back of their minds, which is why they need a good performance to erase that.

At altitude, it’s not so important to start well as we saw with the Lions in the SuperRugby semi-final. From 30 minutes onwards, the altitude starts to kick in and take the sting out of the opposition legs.

Test matches are like playing 12 Currie Cup finals in a year, such is their importance that they are live or die, every one of them.

Which is why I feel sorry for Raymond Rhule, who took full responsibility for his performance, but there’s no need to throw him away as a Springbok. In my time on the Springboks staff, we had a player who missed five tackles on the wing and weeks later he was still deeply upset and disappointed. You could see the hurt in his eyes a month later. But he went on to play stellar rugby for South Africa for the next three years, he recovered and became a regular throughout my tenure with the national team.

The players need to know they have the backing of their coaches and sometimes you get players who are immense talents on attack but their defence is not so strong. Then you have to ask: Is he coachable? Does he listen? Does he make the right decisions under pressure? Is his positional play such that he will be in the right place to execute the tackle?

Social media can be quite brutal, everyone has an opinion, but now it can be stated and broadcast far and wide. In the old days the players didn’t have to bother with any of that.

The Handre Pollard situation has also raised plenty of debate and it’s non-negotiable for me. A returning Springbok has to come back into the franchise 23 because the national interest comes first, sometimes coaches have to see the bigger picture.

He is an elite player for the Bulls and has been with them since he was 18, six years, and he has shown great loyalty and produced many good performances. A player of Pollard’s class should slot in seamlessly.

In 2004, I can remember Jake White released Victor Matfield from the Springbok squad and we were in the middle of our Currie Cup campaign at the Bulls, but we accommodated him on the flank against the Lions.

He was man of the match the next weekend against the All Blacks and that was the season South Africa won the Tri-Nations.

It is vitally important that if a Springbok needs game time, then you give it to him, even if it’s off the bench. We always used to play them at the Bulls and the Western Province, Sharks and Free State national squad players were all welcomed straight back into their teams.

John Mitchell has stated how important the Currie Cup is to build towards SuperRugby. Surely the chance to integrate a world-class player in a match situation is very much a bonus for the Bulls?

So for a week he gets to use his key tactical decision-maker in the Currie Cup while preparing for SuperRugby 2018. Surely you would take that any day?

John McFarland is the assistant coach of the Kubota Spears in Japan and was the Springbok defence coach from 2012 through to the 2015 World Cup, where they conceded the least line-breaks in the tournament and an average of just one try per game. Before that, McFarland won three SuperRugby titles (2007, 09, 10) with the Bulls and five Currie Cup crowns with the Blue Bulls. In all, he won 28 trophies during his 12 years at Loftus Versfeld.

Western Province held on to beat the Blue Bulls 45-34 in their Currie Cup match at Newlands on Saturday, largely because they had built up such a formidable first-half lead that they only needed to add one penalty in the second half to clinch victory.

Western Province produced a superb first half against a Bulls side that simply did not pitch for the first 40 minutes, playing ponderous rugby marked by their inability to hang on to the ball and some extremely soft defence, with the home side racing to a 42-13 lead at the break.

The Blue Bulls came storming back in the second half, largely because they managed to hold on to the ball far better and built pressure. But with such a massive lead, the sting had been taken out of the game for Western Province and they went through the motions for much of the second 40.

The roots of the victory lay up front for Western Province, being based on the wonderful efforts of their pack. They enjoyed obvious dominance in the scrums and even managed to pick off a couple of Blue Bulls lineouts.

While flyhalf Damian Willemse was the choice of the official judges for man of the match, lock JD Schickerling looked a different class in being the focal point of the Western Province forward effort.

Apart from his set-piece prowess, he was constantly in the thick of the action as a ball-carrier and worked hard in defence and at the rucks.

Willemse also had a fine game, highlighted by his 11^th-minute try when he ripped apart some flatfooted, ball-watching defence by the Bulls with some amazing stepping. The 19-year-old loves to attack the gain-line and, while one hates to heap the pressure of expectation on one so young, he does ooze class and has ‘future Springbok’ written all over him.

Willemse’s effort will no doubt be a contender for try of the season, but a long-range try by Blue Bulls wing Kefentse Mahlo could also be in the running. It will certainly be one of the most unlikeliest tries of the season.

Blitzbok Seabelo Senatla was racing for the Bulls line in the 57^th minute and looked certain to score when he was caught from behind by eighthman Nic de Jager, who has been the object of much derision in the horror season for the Pretoria team.

De Jager kept working hard after bringing down the Stormers wing, counter-rucking superbly. Fullback Duncan Matthews then picked up the ball and counter-attacked, freeing Mahlo for a 75-metre dash to the line.

But the defeat, their second in succession, sees the Blue Bulls, the early pacesetters, falling to fourth on the log, behind the Free State Cheetahs, Sharks and Griquas.

Points scorers

Western Province – Tries: Nizaam Carr, Damian Willemse, SP Marais, Seabelo Senatla (2), Scarra Ntubeni. Conversions: Marais (6). Penalty: Marais.

Blue Bulls – Tries: Piet van Zyl, Kefentse Mahlo (2), Johan Grobbelaar. Conversions: Tony Jantjies (4). Penalties: Jantjies (2).

http://citizen.co.za/sport/south-africa-sport/sa-rugby-sport/1609524/currie-cup-first-half-blitzkrieg-enough-for-western-province/