“One Strauss for three du Preez? Seems like a fair trade.” – the editor of this publication Volume 19, Number 27 25 July 2019 Register to receive your own free weekly newsletter at www.rugbyrsa.co.za Wallaby Misery Continues at Ellis Park Going into Saturday's opening Rugby Championship match, the Springboks had faced Australia at Ellis Park ten times in history, losing just once, by two points way back in 1963 – 56 years ago. And this Wallaby team was not good enough to prevent that record being extended for at least another year. But this is not a blow-by-blow match report. We use this space to link you to that sort of thing and to try to provide some context to the stories we choose to link. Speaking of which, the match on Saturday was a dream Springbok début for flyhalf Elton Jantjies’ younger brother, Herschel. Another fascinating – and, indeed, wonderful part of Saturday’s test match at fortress Ellis Park was the Jantjies the Younger scored the first try after running Gwijo Squad. a brilliant supporting line for Sbu Nkosi and got a second with a sniping run of his own down the blind You can find this vibrant, thoroughly enjoyable part side before being substituted in the 66th minute. of test-match rugby in South Africa at the matches, on Twitter and on Facebook. In our view, it’s a There’s a lovely video tribute to Herschel on Twitter, wonderful and stunningly unique addition to our rich put there by SARugbymag.com. He was most Springbok tradition and heritage. deservedly selected Man of the Match for his efforts. But we digress. Getting back to actual rugby, one of our favourite commentators on the game is the one and only Oom Rugby. On Tuesday, he shared a link to a fascinating analysis by Murray Kinsella on what Oom called “Springbok bounce back plays”. He opined that Kinsella’s analysis illustrates perfectly the high value of crossing the gainline as well as why a big carry through the flyhalf channel can be so devastating in modern rugby. KEY TOPICS IN THIS NEWSLETTER Currie Cup Results Give Log Interesting Look Josh Strauss to Return to South Africa Jaguares in Pole Position to Step Up Next Year Provincialism in SA Rugby is Far From Dead Age-Group Rugby Champs a Work in Progress Hansen Brings Out the All Blacks A Team Page 1 Currie Cup Results Give Log Interesting Look Jaguares in Pole Position to Step Up Next Year The Currie Cup Premier Division fixtures this At the halfway mark in the Currie Cup First Division, weekend began on Friday afternoon when the Pumas its looking more and more likely that the Jaguares are visited Kimberley to take on the home town Griquas. going to reign supreme. So far this season they have It was always going to be a tough fixture for the two beaten Griffons (43-50) at home, welcomed Boland teams that disputed the SuperSport Rugby Challenge Cavaliers to their tournament base in Potchefstroom final. and thrashed them (54-17) and, last week, travelled to East London to absolutely hammer Border Bulldogs And so it turned out. Although the home team took (12-78). the lead relatively early and never fell behind, every time they scored, the visitors came back at them – to the extent that the Pumas levelled the match at 29-all with less than ten minutes to go. In the end, the final score of 37-29 will be a warning to all other teams in the competition. The Friday night encounter at Lotus was a different story. The visiting Free State Cheetahs scored first and never looked back. They led Blue Bulls by ten points at half-time (12-22) and just kept stretching They play EP Elephants this week, SWD Eagles next out the lead in the second half. weekend, Valke on the following weekend Leopards Indeed, if it wasn’t for two unconverted tries in the in week seven. On current form, we seriously cannot last few minutes, the scoreline would have been see them losing any of those matches. Nor do we decidedly unflattering for the home side. They also expect any team to challenge them in the semifinals conceded a bonus point to the visitors. The final or final, but stranger things have happened. score was 27-43. The interesting bit will be to see who they play in the As an aside, the Currie Cup may turn out to be a promotion/relegation match at the end of the season. useful warm-up exercise for the PRO14. The At the moment Blue Bulls lie at the bottom of the Southern Kings will no doubt be doing the same in Premier Division log with Pumas marginally above the First Division but, probably, with less intensity. them. But with four rounds to go, there’s still a lot of rugby to be played. The final match of the weekend was on Saturday in Durban where our editor’s least favoured team hosted Getting back to this weekend’s action, we once again Western Province. Unfortunately him and for fans in couldn’t find any First Division match reports. But the Western Cape, the home side burgled a first win the results are on the SARugby website and show (32-27). that Boland was pipped by EP Elephants (38-39) at home, Valke bagged an away win in a low-scoring match against Leopards (7-12) and Griffons had to settle for a draw against SWD Eagles (36-all). This weekend’s fixtures – apart from the EP Elephants vs Jaguares (Saturday) encounter already mentioned – will see SWD Eagles entertain Boland Cavaliers (Friday, 19:00), Valke host Griffons (Saturday) and Leopards welcome Border Bulldogs (Saturday). All the Saturday games appear to kick off at 15:00 but, again, none seem scheduled for television broadcast. Page 2 Page 3 Age-Group Rugby Champs a Work in Progress Josh Strauss to Return to South Africa SA Rugby’s U20 Championships continued this past We first became aware of the news when Jamie Lyall weekend with Griquas going down narrowly to reported it on Twitter: “Josh Strauss is set to return to Griffons (36-38) in Kimberley, Limpopo Blue Bulls South Africa, agreeing a deal to join the Bulls. Sale thrashed Valke (61-29) and Boland Cavaliers did a Sharks are allowing him to move on despite having a similar demolition job on SWD Eagles (71-11). year left on his contract. Had drawn interest from France, and I believe Glasgow too made some Looking at the log, and while it’s too early to identify enquiries about bringing him back to Scotstoun.” any clear trends, EP Elephants, Griffons, Leopards and Pumas have all played one, won one. This weekend should help sort the wheat from the chaff when Griffons host Leopards and both EP Elephants and Pumas play away against SWD Eagles and Valke respectively. Meanwhile, the U21 Championships is at the halfway stage with Blue Bulls seven points clear on top of the log. Below that is a tussle for the other semifinal spots. Last weekend Golden Lions lost at home to Western Province (10-20) while Free State Cheetahs triumphed away from home in Durban (40-44) and Blue Bulls travelled to Potchefstroom to put the Leopards to the sword (6-38). We subsequently looked into it and found several news stories with a little more detail but, to be frank, The fixtures this week are all return matches: not as much as we had hoped. All appear to have Leopards will be in Durban, Golden Lions travel to been instigated by an announcement by his club. Bloemfontein and Blue Bulls make the arduous trip to Cape Town. All three of the away teams won the And the news is pretty much contained in Lyall’s fist match between the sides when playing at home so Tweet above. But Strauss’ comment in the it could be interesting. announcement may hint at what might be behind it: “For family reasons a move back to South Africa Unfortunately, none of the above is being televised as makes sense and I was delighted to get an offer from far as we can see so you will have to go down to a the Bulls ahead of the 2020 Super Rugby Season. I rugby field near you if you want to catch any of the wish Dimes and the club all the best for the future.” action. Full details of the U20 Championships and the U21 Championships can be found on the web. Another factor that may have come into play is a move to Manchester by the du Preez twins, Jean-Luc and Daniel, along with elder brother Rob. That was initially to be on a temporary loan basis but then daddy dearest was fired from his coaching job in Durban. Ok. Fired is our word. The official announcement went something along the lines of: the franchise “...had amicably parted ways with [its] head coach.” But getting back to the man of the moment, Josh Strauss, the news of his imminent arrival prompted our utterly unopionionated editor to quip: “One Strauss for three du Preez? Seems like a fair trade.” Page 4 Page 5 Provincialism in SA Rugby is Far From Dead Hansen Brings Out the All Blacks A Team It is probably to be expected that South African There’s an interesting piece on Rugby365 this week rugby fans – particularly those of a certain age – are asserting that All Blacks coach, Steve Hansen, has still steeped in the almost rabid provincialism with selected his best possible team for the fixture against which they grew up.