Ken Borland

It took no more than half-an-hour of their SuperFan Saturday game against the Sharks at Loftus Versfeld for the Bulls to head off into the west and disappear into the sunset, such was their dominance in terms of power and pace on their way to a 49-28 victory.

In that opening half-hour, the Bulls were simply dazzling as they raced into a 35-0 lead with five wonderful tries. The Sharks struck back with a try after the halftime hooter, and went into the break 7-35 down. The Bulls replaced almost their entire 1^st XV after 52 minutes, and the visitors were able to make the scoreline less embarrassing.

But there was no doubting they had been blown off the park in the first half by the Bulls’ dazzling combination of immense forward power and extreme pace and elusiveness in the backline, with veteran flyhalf Morne Steyn running the show with aplomb and thoroughly enjoying all the front-foot ball he was given.

The Bulls opened the scoring in the sixth minute with a fairly typical driving maul try scored by hooker Schalk Erasmus, but thereafter it was the guys with the fast feet and rocket-pace at the back who stole the show. Coach Jake White had said during the week that we should watch out for the likes of Gio Aplon, Stedman Gans and Kurt-Lee Arendse and they did not disappoint, while former Springbok wing Cornal Hendricks shone as he moved into the inside centre position.

Outside centre Gans stepped brilliantly and raced away after the Sharks had failed to handle a bomb from Steyn, wing Arendse then scored the try of the game as he outpaced everyone from 80 metres out after the Sharks, hard on attack, had knocked on in the maul, and lovely work by Hendricks then sent Arendse over for his second try 10 minutes later. Gans also turned provider as he set up wing Travis Ismaiel for the fifth try.

As sparkling as the running of the backs was, it was obviously the tremendous graft of the pack that made it possible. The sheer physicality of prop Jacques van Rooyen, locks Ruan Nortje and Jason Jenkins, and loose forwards Duane Vermeulen and Arno Botha meant the Bulls won the battle of the gain-line, while Marco van Staden was the terror of the breakdowns.

There was no doubting the character of the Sharks though, and the defence of the Bulls was also given a good workout and generally stood up well.

The Sharks dominated the latter stages of the second half, scoring four tries in all. But the loss of momentum, both on the field on Saturday and in terms of where they left off in Super Rugby, will be of great concern for coach Sean Everitt.

Points scorers

Bulls – Tries: Schalk Erasmus, Stedman Gans, Kurt-Lee Arendse (2), Travis Ismaiel, David Kriel (2). Conversions: Morne Steyn (5), Chris Smith (2).

Sharks – Tries: Grant Williams, Marius Louw, Daniel Jooste, Jaden Hendrickse. Conversions: Curwin Bosch (2), Jordan Chait (2).

Blistering pace and a keen nose for the tryline meant Bryan Habana was like an arrow zeroing in on its target when it came to try-scoring and the Springbok wing holds the records for the World Cup, Tri-Nations/Rugby Championship, the Springboks and for South Africans in SuperRugby. It is heartening to see the 36-year-old show the same acumen now that he has retired and is in the business world.

A graduate of the Toulouse business school, Habana is now the co-founder of Retroviral, a digital sports marketing agency with a strong emphasis on tech. It’s a career move which probably has its roots back in the early 2000s when he signed up for a BSc IT degree at the then Rand Afrikaans University. But then rugby got in the way.

The Covid-19 pandemic has drastically affected everyone’s lifestyles and is likely to force structural adjustments to the economy of just about everything. Sport has been especially hard hit with the global sports industry now projected to face losses of $62 billion.

The Lockdown has also provided much food for thought for entrepreneurs and, typical of the sharp minds of Habana, Mike Sharman and Ben Karpinski, the founders of Retroviral, they have come up with a great new idea that will assist the wellbeing of sportsmen and women as they look to navigate these tumultuous times.

MatchKit.co is a mobile tech platform that allows athletes to build their own website. And not those starchy looking ones that are never updated, have lots of photos that take forever to load and are low on substance.

Within five minutes, sports stars can build themselves a website that highlights their sponsors, automatically integrates into all the big social media channels and provides detailed stats of their engagements on those platforms, has a plug-and-play, secure e-commerce store that will enable them to sell anything from branded merchandise to video or audio shoutouts, and a portal that will enable people to donate to their foundation or favourite charity.

It has often proven a stiff task for sportspeople to promote themselves better, they tend to forget certain sponsors or, in many cases, not even have an Online presence. MatchKit.co certainly appears to be able to overcome these problems.

“I’m extremely excited, MatchKit will add tangible value to athletes and allow them to easily commercialise their brands around the world. I know I was all over the place after our 2007 World Cup win, but MatchKit now allows the athlete to control their commercial rights, it empowers them, while showcasing their sponsors.

“It came about after bouncing ideas off a South African venture capitalist who’s now in the United States and it has a simple set-up. You look at sportspeople Online and not even 10-15% will have their agent’s details there. What if corporates want to engage with them? What happens if they change their agent?” Habana said at the launch this week.

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The great news to come out of the cricketing world in the last week is that the West Indies tour of England looks set to go ahead with the Caribbean squad arriving on Tuesday to quarantine ahead of a three-Test series that will start on July 8. The matches will be played behind closed doors in a bio-secure environment, with the first Test being held in Southampton, followed by two matches at Old Trafford, starting on July 16 and July 24 respectively.

That means the series will end on July 28. South Africa were scheduled to have played their first Test in the West Indies from July 23-27, with the second meant to start on July 31. With a lucrative T20 series against India lined up for the end of August, it now seems likely the Proteas will only meet the West Indians in September and there is still no clarity on whether that series will take place in the Caribbean or in South Africa, or even be moved to a neutral venue like England. The tour of the West Indies was originally meant to be of just over a month’s duration, so it doesn’t look possible to cram in the two Tests and five T20s that were meant to be played even if the Men in Maroon plant themselves in the UK and the Proteas fly over there and quarantine in the second half of July.

If the Proteas are to be regularly playing on pitches with pace and bounce at home in the future then “the time is right to start moving now” towards the solution to the pitch problems that have been highlighted in South African cricket during the India tour, according to Cricket South Africa pitch consultant Hilbert Smit.

For a country renowned for the quality of their fast bowling, the pitches in South Africa have generally been becoming slower and lower, and the solution will be drop-in pitches, according to Smit.

“Our pitches are old, it’s as simple as that. Maybe only Centurion is less than 10 years old, so they are all over-used and full of organic matter. You must remember that a pitch is a living creature and when the grass dies off, you get natural decomposition which helps new grass to grow because nutrients are released. But you also get a build-up of organic matter and that’s what makes a pitch slow and low.

“And a new pitch can’t be used for international cricket for the first two years because it needs to settle and it’s more difficult to do this on-site because you have games next door or over it going on all the time. Plus we can only use the three or four middle strips for all televised games.

“Australia have similar conditions to us and they have addressed this problem with drop-in pitches. We have to make a plan too because with cricket starting on the highveld in August, there’s no time to grow pitches out in the middle. So drop-ins are the only solution,” Smit told Saturday Citizen on Friday.

The highly-experienced groundsman says he will be sending a comprehensive report to CSA at the end of March on the state of pitches around the country and, while Australia’s system is very expensive due to the cost of transporting the drop-ins, Smit believes necessity is the mother of invention and a local solution has been found which will bring the costs down to acceptable levels.

“In Australia it costs about A$7 million, but we do have a local engineer who has come up with a concept, a unique design, that could cut that to a one-off R2-3 million per ground. Then we can replace pitches every year. That is the way forward because it’s something we have to address,” Smit said.

While there will always be a debate around whether it is acceptable for the national team to demand certain types of pitches, there is general concensus around the cricketing world that wickets with pace and bounce are the best way to develop batsmen with the all-round game to succeed all over the world. Even India have pushed for those attributes at home.

Many have linked the fall of West Indies cricket to the decline in their pitches in the 1990s, hard surfaces with pace and carry becoming slow and low.

“You can’t expect to produce proper cricketers if you can’t produce proper conditions,” the late, great fast bowler Malcolm Marshall said in 1998 when he was the West Indies coach. “We’ve got batsmen coming through now with plenty of faults and that’s largely due to the sub-standard pitches they’re playing on.”

The good news for South African cricket is that there is agreement that there is a problem.

“Conditions in South Africa have changed quite a lot, the pitches are over-used and have become slower, more spin-friendly. There was a lot more pace and bounce when I started my career, for example in Durban, Shaun Pollock used to call the Kingsmead pitch his lawn because of all the grass. You now consider reverse-swing and spin as your main weapons there,” Graeme Smith, who debuted for the Proteas in 2002, said.

The groundsman’s lot is not an easy one with hostile African weather always threatening to derail the preparations, so they need all the help they can get given the enormous workload of their creations.

“Grass is what gives a pitch its pace, and our groundsmen are now trying to grow it through winter, but too much grass is dangerous. Cricket is the only sport in the world where you see the effect of such a little playing area, the pitch determines the whole way the game is played, everything’s all about that little 3×22 metre patch. It can cause a total mismatch.

“We are all human and we all get it wrong sometimes, plus you’ve got the influence of the weather as well. For an inexperienced groundsman, it is basically unfair and this series has highlighted that. But we don’t want to make the same mistakes, so we will have closer mentoring and link with the RPCs and Hubs to bring guys through. One of our shortcomings is mentoring and training,” Smit, who is only in his first year in a full-time capacity with CSA, said.

https://citizen.co.za/sport/south-africa-sport/sa-cricket-sport/1804869/the-time-is-now-for-south-african-cricket-to-cure-pitch-ills/

What a fantastic game of rugby it was at Newlands, with the incredible atmosphere, the pace, intensity and physicality making it real Test match rugby.

Unfortunately the Springboks lost, but they gave a huge performance and the All Blacks will know they were lucky to win. It was so pleasing to see the Springboks go from 57-0 to losing by just a point, but they should have won.

Of course the game could have been different had Nehe Milner-Skudder’s break been finished off or Rieko Ioane had not been tackled over the goal-line by Jesse Kriel, those 14 points could have deflated the Springboks. But it was also the home side’s own mistakes that gave the All Blacks the points they needed.

Even the last-minute controversy was avoidable because it’s always a risk rushing for the charge down; you need to come at an angle so you don’t hit the kicker head-on. It’s to protect the kicker and Damian was too square-on. He did manage to put Lima Sopoaga off his drop kick, but he also would have known he was late and risked sanction, and conceded the penalty anyway. It wasn’t the best moment in Damian de Allende’s rugby life and it changed the complexion of the game because the All Blacks were then two scores clear and with just 14 men on the field, it was an uphill task for the Springboks.

The breakdown turnovers were the key and you could see the reaction of the team after Malcolm Marx and Francois Louw stole the ball. The mix of the back row Allister Coetzee chose came in for a lot of criticism but it was done for a reason.

Siya Kolisi and Francois Louw were the two breakdown players, which you need to disrupt the All Blacks’ attacking pattern, and Pieter-Steph du Toit provided physicality and bolstered the lineout.

In terms of the Springbok kicking game, they kicked a bit more than previously, although I find it strange that the crowd boos our own scrumhalf for kicking box-kicks, while the New Zealand scrumhalf is applauded for doing it. The plan was clearly to have contestable kicks to test the All Blacks back three. In the last World Cup semi-final, Milner-Skudder dropped a few high balls and was eventually moved away from the wing, so that was clearly part of the Springboks’ plan at Newlands.

You can’t just run willy-nilly from your own half, sometimes you’ve got to kick. It must either be long into the 22, which gives you time to build a chase line or force the catcher to kick out and give you a lineout; or he will kick long which gives you the chance to put the running bomb up; or it must be contestable. If you’re accurate enough then you have a 50/50 chance of winning the ball back, or you can put in a dominant tackle, get a turnover or just slow their ball down.

That did not happen in Ross Cronje’s box-kick that led to Damian McKenzie’s spectacular try, but to be fair, David Havili was allowed too much space and time to run across the field. The Springboks have struggled with guys running across their defensive line, it raises doubts as to whether the outside defender should turn in or trust the player on the inside. It’s something the Springboks have got to tighten up.

What was probably most pleasing of all – and credit must go to their conditioning for this – was that the Springboks were much stronger at the end of the game, both physically and mentally. Playing at sea level, as predicted, was also important because it makes it a level playing field.

The performance of the pack was magnificent, they were bristling on the gain-line, they won the collisions and they really gained confidence from the lineout. The Springboks went for four-man lineouts and then the short ball, which ensured they were able to win quality possession. The maul try they scored was also really pleasing.

The forwards seem to be in that special zone right now where they are full of confidence and intensity and they are really playing for each other.

We should also not underestimate Francois Louw’s calmness and experience and just his assurance, which definitely has an impact on his fellow forwards on and off the field.

Elton Jantjies’ kick at goal that he didn’t put over was also important and at international level you’ve got to convert those chances.

The main problem with the backline was that they were a little too deep and too lateral. Everyone wishes they can have a flat attack, because that’s what causes the defence the most problems, and it was better when Handre Pollard came on. Then again, there has to be quick ruck ball for the number 10 to take the ball into the jaws of the defence.

Ironically, the shorter lineouts do actually cause a problem for the backs because then there’s not much chance for them to have a one-on one. It’s good that Allister Coetzee is backing combinations because that induces trust, but he needs to be aware if, over a period of time, players aren’t really performing.

With the backs being a bit too lateral and too deep at Newlands, it allowed the All Blacks to pick off the carriers in the backline. It was interesting when Pollard came on that he played much flatter to the gain-line, which brought his forwards more into play, for example when Malcolm Marx hit the hole and set up the try for Jean-Luc du Preez.

For the end-of-year tour it will obviously be different conditions to South Africa, especially compared to on the highveld.

Both the matches against Ireland and Wales will be played in stadia with roofs, which makes a difference. Hopefully the Springboks have now found the formula that works for them.

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.