Ken Borland

As three South African sides chase playoff spots in the last three rounds of United Rugby Championship round-robin action, one of the northern hemisphere’s star enforcers of the previous decade has said the high intensity of their play rather than a push to play expansive rugby is what will bring success for the Stormers, Sharks and Bulls.

Jim Hamilton is currently a pundit for Premier Sports but he played 63 Tests for Scotland and was a second-row star for teams like Leicester, Gloucester and Saracens. And he is a big fan of South African rugby.

“I always say for any team, if you’re struggling to get go-forward, go and get some South Africans,” Hamilton said in a URC media briefing on Monday. “South Africans are taking over as the best players in the world.

“I’ve been surprised by how much rugby the South African teams have played: they go wide from their own half, or straight from a scrum. But the European teams are still leading the charge in terms of the stats for tries scored, carries and defenders beaten. So why don’t they just play ball-in-hand against the South Africans?

“Well it’s hard to play in those conditions, they definitely have an effect, altitude hits you like a brick wall. I saw guys who were absolutely bollocked with the hands on their knees.

“But the game now is so driven by percentages and when the South African teams come over to Europe and decide not to play how they do in the Currie Cup but more like their national team, focusing more on territory and playing in the right areas, then they will become incredibly dangerous,” Hamilton said.

The former Scotland stalwart admitted to being frustrated by the poor start the South African teams made to the URC, but now that they have been back on home turf, they have been rampant

“South African players are the whole package – robust, the humility they bring, and they are hard; everything around them is just rugby. If I was a coach, I would go look there for players. It’s unquestionable that every single one of them in Europe has been a roaring success.

“But the South African teams were a bit of a disappointment at the start. We all said how positive their inclusion was, but then it was not how we thought it would be. But a lot of it had to do with the changes brought by Covid.

“They definitely struggled around the referees over here and their interpretations, it felt like they were playing for the sake of playing. I don’t think they got a fair shot then and it was always going to take a while for them to bed in to the competition.

“But now their results are speaking for themselves, now that they are fully loaded and taking the tournament seriously. Don’t just judge them on this year, but now we’ve seen the URC works,” Hamilton said.

The United Rugby Championship is the successor to SuperRugby for the four South African teams involved in it, and it loans from the southern hemisphere competition the excitement of seeing different players and styles of rugby.

It also, however, is running into the same problem that SuperRugby did in terms of how incredibly difficult it is for teams to win overseas; perhaps even more so in the URC.

Excluding the matches involving the two Italian teams, who have won just four of their 27 games combined, there have only been four wins by teams travelling overseas to play, as opposed to 26 losses and one draw, which was when the Stormers held Edinburgh 20-20 in October.

The overseas victories have been by the Sharks over the Ospreys, the Bulls beating the struggling Cardiff Blues, Stormers beating the hapless Dragons and Edinburgh surprising the Sharks at Kings Park.

The best sporting events have a large element of unpredictability about them; the excitement of a 50/50 contest, nobody being quite sure who is going to win. It is partly why a Test match between the Springboks and All Blacks is so exciting.

But so far in the URC, teams hosting an overseas side (excluding matches involving Zebre or Benetton) have won 84% of the time. So the competition has been a little too predictable.

But let’s not detract from the overall excellence of the Celtic teams playing at home or the superb manner in which the South African teams rebounded from tough starts to the competition, being thrown straight into the deep end overseas in the UK autumn.

I am optimistic that the URC will go from strength-to-strength as a thrilling, highly competitive tournament, especially with the announcement this week from CEO Martin Anayi that from next season, the schedule will pause during international weekends.

That means teams like Leinster, Edinburgh, Ospreys, the Sharks and Stormers, will not be deprived from playing their internationals at key times of the tournament. Even Cardiff, who are sitting 13^th on the log, have had 10 Welsh internationals ripped from their squad for much of the tournament.

The first year of the new URC has suffered badly from the effects of Covid and the postponements it has forced. But as the pandemic dies down, so we should get a clearer picture of how good this new competition really is.

Refereeing is a constant source of controversy in all rugby these days, and the South African teams certainly struggled to adapt to not only the conditions in the UK but also how the officials interpreted the game. There was a feeling that it would be payback back at home when local referees befuddled the visiting teams.

And then the URC announced that all matches in South Africa would be controlled by neutral referees, which was no doubt a snub for our officials and bad news for those wanting to see overseas teams blown off the park.

But Bulls coach Jake White is a sly old fox, and he recognised early on that having the best referees in control of matches would lead to the best team winning more often. He backed the idea of neutral referees and it certainly seems to have helped the South African teams establish their dominance on home soil.

My feeling is that our local referees allow too much skulduggery at the ruck, which leads to slow ball and a lack of momentum for the attacking team.

Now, with confidence restored, let’s hope a couple of other South African teams can sneak into the top eight and join our Shield champion in the playoffs.

Not once has South African men’s hockey coach Garreth Ewing suggested that the FIH Hockey Pro League will be anything but daunting, and it will get no easier for his team as their next assignment sees them travel to Argentina to play the 2016 Olympic champions in two Tests on April 23 and 24.

Having hosted a leg of the tournament in Potchefstroom in February, in which they lost all eight matches and conceded 52 goals against Germany, France, India and the Netherlands, South Africa are now well aware of the high standards in the competition.

“It was harder than we expected, I must admit,” Ewing told The Citizen. “But it was really disappointing that it took us a bit long to adjust to the tempo, admittedly against very good sides.

“There was improvement through the tournament though and we were quite disappointed not to get a couple of results in the end.

“Although it was a mentally and physically tough tournament for us, it was a very valuable exercise based on the squad we had, the rotation of players and the opportunities we gave them.

“We also made some tactical progress in terms of the areas of the game without the ball – how you pressurise the ball and utilise space. And there were glimpses of good counter-attack,” Ewing said.

South Africa will be bringing a new-look squad to Argentina, due to the unavailability of some of their players, the bulk of whom are amateurs. But, on the positive side, regular captain Tim Drummond returns, having been absent during the local leg of the Pro League.

“We’ve had selection issues and the unavailability of players is an ongoing challenge. So there will be quite a few changes,” Ewing said.

“Having Tim back will make a big difference, especially in terms of his experience and leadership. We’re playing in Buenos Aires, so we’ll be up against big crowds, which we are not used to over the last couple of years.

“There are still some technical weaknesses we need to sort out, both in attack and defence, in terms of how we hang on to the ball when we have it and the pressure we exert without the ball.

“There was a bit of a lack of continuity due to getting things wrong at just the wrong time. But at times we were really good but just didn’t get good outcomes. We would get to the circle but just not get the ball in the goals,” Ewing said.

One would not have guessed from Mark Boucher’s face that he was celebrating another Proteas series win on Monday, but the lack of a big smile was probably because the South Africa coach knows his first priority now is to save his job in the face of those in South African cricket who are intent on his removal.

The Proteas ended their season on Monday in Gqeberha with a crunching 332-run win over Bangladesh for a 2-0 series win and an overall record of five wins from seven Tests this summer.

Combined with their unexpectedly good showing at the T20 World Cup and their brilliant 3-0 ODI whitewash of India, their coach should be sitting pretty and all smiles.

But instead Boucher will be facing a disciplinary hearing next month over charges of gross misconduct. In terms of his on-field job, in the here-and-now, about the only shortcomings of this Test side have been their annoying tendency to lose the first Test of a series, as they did against India and in New Zealand.

“It’s been a good summer, but we are still learning, we’re definitely not the complete team yet,” Boucher said sternly. “We’ve had our challenges, but we’ve played some very competitive cricket at times.

“There have also been times when we have played some bad cricket, like the first Tests against India and New Zealand. But we have grown a lot in a short space of time.

“For me personally, it has been tough. I’ve really enjoyed coaching the guys and the cricketing side of my job, it’s a tight unit. But outside that team environment, it’s quite difficult to say I enjoyed it.

“I don’t think anyone would be able to say they enjoy what has been put on my plate,” Boucher said.

The 45-year-old was famous for being a fighter though in his playing days, and overcoming challenges is his trademark, something his team managed to do against Bangladesh when they were lumped with a second-string side due to five players choosing to go to the IPL instead.

“It gave us the opportunity to play a couple of other guys and see what sort of players we have in the system. And also the opportunity to play a different brand of cricket, which has been good to watch.

“It’s a nice position to be in. The IPL guys did vacate their spots, and there is good competition now for those places. Through Covid we’ve looked at a lot of players and I think it’s paying off now,” Boucher said.

But even though things on the field are going well right now, the sum of all real South African cricket lovers’ fears could well come true if Boucher is fired for incidents that happened in the changeroom two decades ago.