The opening round of Vodacom Super Rugby will go some way towards answering the question about whether the Emirates Lions can continue the trend of the past two season by overcoming all internal opposition.
The Lions have made two finals in a row now and a big part of that was their ability to win all their derby matches against South African opponents, with their only losses in matches played within their group being the two understrength defeats at the hands of the Jaguares in Buenos Aires. Indeed, you have to go back to July 2015, when the DHL Stormers and Lions fought out a stalemate at Newlands that clinched the Stormers the South African conference, for the last occasion that the Lions dropped points against local opposition.
Since then it has been relative plain sailing for Warren Whiteley’s team. The Stormers did look like they were mounting a strong challenge in the early parts of last season. The effect of skills coach Paul Feeney’s impact was felt strongly and they scored a good win over the Chiefs as they went into the Easter weekend unbeaten.
That though was when they faced the Lions for the first and only time in Super Rugby in 2017, and it turned into a good win for the Lions. The game was played at Newlands, it burst the home side’s morale ahead of their tour of New Zealand, and the Cape team was arguably not the same again after that.
The Lions have easily dominated the Vodacom Bulls since 2015, and they’ve also tended to win fairly comfortably against the Cell C Sharks, who they host in their first game on Saturday. However, the Sharks came close to beating them both times the two teams met at Emirates Airlines Park last season – once in the league game and again in the quarterfinal, where the Lions had to rely on a late Ruan Combrink penalty to get through.
Combrink is one of the players who won’t be there this year. He suffered a long-term injury playing in Japan not long after last year’s competition ended. Courtnall Skosan, the other wing, will also be missing after being injured in the off-season, though at least the Springbok won’t be out for as long as first feared. Initially it was thought he would be out for the season but he is now expected back in April or May.
Loose-forward Ruhan Ackermann, an underrated player, has followed his father Johan to England. Which introduces the first big question mark over the Lions’ chances of going one better than previous years by winning Super Rugby – their coach Swys de Bruin did work with Ackermann during the Lions’ years of being strong challengers, but Ackermann will be missed. How much he will be missed by will determine the Lions’ chances of remaining the top South African challenger.
The Lions are also likely to face much stiffer opposition from the other South African teams. The Sharks have managed to create the sort of depth they haven’t been able to boast in a while, and while they lost at the final hurdle, their strong domestic challenge in 2017 will have imbued them with confidence. Remember too that they welcome back several players from Japan who did not feature in the Currie Cup.
The Sharks showed in the two Johannesburg clashes with the Lions last year that they need not fear their opponents, and for them it is just a case of needing to cross that fine barrier that separates teams that make a habit of winning narrowly from teams that lose narrowly. The Lions have been in the former category over the past two years and a change to that trend on Saturday could signify that a shift in the balance of power is imminent.
For the Sharks to mount a genuine challenge, however, they will have to lose their tendency to be inconsistent. Last year there was a sequence that should have disturbed Sharks fans whereby one week they’d win against a strong team and then the next week ruin it by being poor against more mediocre opposition.
The Stormers should also be stronger this year, at least on the face of it. They have had another off-season to work on their skills with Feeney and the return of Steven Kitshoff from France has added hugely to the firepower they have available at forward. At full strength, the Stormers should boast the strongest South African pack as they do have the most current Springboks – Kitshoff, Bongi Mbonambi, Frans Malherbe, Wilco Louw, Eben Etzebeth, Pieter-Steph du Toit and Siya Kolisi.
However, rugby competitions are not won on paper, and the Stormers already have some of the afore-mentioned players on the injured list. In particular, the influential Etzebeth will be missed in the early part of the season. They also have the toughest draw of the local teams, with their tour of Australia and New Zealand set to start straight after Saturday’s Newlands opener against the Jaguares.
The Bulls won’t be champions this year, or shouldn’t be, but the loss of Jan Serfontein to France, and that is a big loss, will be more than made up for by the significant changes that have been made to the personnel occupying their coaching dug-out. John Mitchell was already making significant improvements to the Bulls’ playing style during the Currie Cup, and at that point he had what could be best described as a second or third choice pack.
He has some significant returnees from Springbok duty and Japan playing for him now, and one of the interesting facets of the coming season will be watching what Mitchell can do to return Handre Pollard to the form he displayed as a youngster, what he can do to iron out the fault-lines in the game of Jessie Kriel, and his ability to turn some of the big Bulls wings into dinkum good all-round rugby players.
The Bulls shouldn’t challenge the Lions’ local hegemony, not just yet, so it will be left to the Stormers and Sharks to do that. The latter have been boosted by the return to coaching of former Sharks and Lions head coach and Springbok assistant Dick Muir, who will be looked at to introduce the flair that might have been missing previously. The Stormers will be looking to build on what they started last year.
But even though their own fans seem less optimistic than they were previously, if the Lions can move seamlessly through the transition from the Ackermann era into the new dispensation, there is no reason they shouldn’t emerge once more as South Africa’s top team. Although they never won the Currie Cup last year, they did make a strong fist of it towards the end, and along the way they developed some fine back-up talent.
For instance, if there is an injury to Franco Mostert, or the Bok loses form, Marvin Orie is a more than capable replacement. And there are several other areas in the Lions team where you’d say the same, particularly at centre, where there could be an interesting choice to be made between Rohan Janse van Rensburg and Harold Vorster when it comes to who should partner Lionel Mapoe.
It’s been said before and perhaps it should be said again – the Lions have been on the same path for several years now and that is one of their strengths. They still have the core of the same leadership group, led by Whiteley and Jaco Kriel. Their chances of being toppled from their pedestal will depend on how much the other teams have been able to catch up.
SUPERSPORTS
Comments
Post a Comment