ON THE BALL: Watching the South African teams play rugby in the northern hemisphere winter was like watching naked rugby players freezing in icy water, writes Lucky Maree.
In his book, The Right Place at the Wrong Time, Corné Krige describes the demoralising, humiliating and downright degrading experience of Kamp Staaldraad.
For those who have forgotten, or have chosen to forget, the totally unsuccessful Springbok coach Rudolf Straeuli arranged in 2003 for the Springbok squad to go to a police camp in the South African bush.
The idea was that they would forget about themselves and become team players. The outcome was one of the most shameful events in the history of South African rugby.
Most degrading of all were pictures leaked from the camp, showing Springbok players standing naked in a freezing lake and holding rugby balls in front of their private parts.
That was Kamp Staaldraad. This weekend we had Kamp Munster, Kamp Connacht and Kamp Glasgow.
There was something brutal about watching the Lions players trying to play rugby against Munster in a howling wind with their faces being lashed by clear, icy rain pouring down their faces and bodies. Did they lose? Of course they did. They got thrashed to the tune of 33-3!
The Sharks had to contend with Kamp Connacht, playing in driving rain at near-zero temperatures. The wind was so strong the easiest kicks at poles were blown to the corner flags.
Sharks coach Neil Powell, presumably to make the best of a bad situation, had saved his magnificent “A” team for next week’s match against Bordeaux-Beg in the Heineken Champions Cup. In their place he sent a team of inexperienced youngsters to play Connacht, one of the hardest club teams in international rugby. Those young Sharks players had spent 31 hours in transit and they had managed to fit in one warm-up training session before the match. And most of them had never played together.
The Sharks lost by “only” 12 points, even managing to score two tries.
The Bulls, who are 3rd in the URC standings, beat the Dragons, who are third from the bottom, by 29-14. If it wasn’t for the conditions the Bulls would have beaten them by 30 points.
The Stormers, the one team that could turn the tables this weekend, went down to Glasgow Warriors. The slightly bearable Glasgow late afternoon weather turned ugly as the sun went down and the temperatures plummeted. For the last 20 minutes, the rain came bucketing down – just in time for the Stormers to concede a try and lose by seven points.
Rugby is a hard game. It is played by hard men. This is understood. But they are not steel robots.
Scotland is 400 miles south of the Arctic circle. Whoever decided that teams from the tip of Africa should play against teams from Scotland in the middle of the European winter must have a sadistic sense of humour or must love money more than the game itself.
Super Rugby, as we all remember, ended up a failed experiment. The time zones were blamed and it certainly played a part, but the reality is that fit young rugby players do not have the kind of bodies that can sit in an aeroplane seat for 14, 20 or even 30 hours at a time. Firstly, they are physically too big and secondly, those finely tuned machines can’t go without exercise for too long.
Somebody must rethink the URC. Not only do tournaments like the URC have the potential of killing the goose that lays the golden egg; it could easily drive young players from the game altogether.
Munster Rugby 33-3 Emirates Lions
Dragons RFC 14-29 Vodacom Bulls
Connacht 24-12 Cell C Sharks
Glasgow Warriors 24-17 Stormers
Pictured above: Manie Libbok. Like the other Stormers players, he had an on-off kind of game
Image source: Gallo Images
