The Crusaders’ muted celebrations at the end of their semifinal win over the Hurricanes suggest they feel their job is not yet done. But they would have been alone in thinking that the later game in Johannesburg had lost much of its relevance.
There is a reason South African teams have no record of success in New Zealand Super Rugby playoff games. Until the organisers of the competition schedule a two-week break before the final there will remain an air of inevitability about the showpiece game of the season when there is a big travel element involved.
At the same time Lions captain Warren Whiteley had it right with his comment — when you are in the final, you give yourself a chance.
It reminded me of a column former Wallaby captain Dick Cocks, who also captained Natal and was then a Natal selector, wrote in a Durban newspaper on the morning of the 1990 Currie Cup final between Northern Transvaal and Natal at Loftus Versfeld.
They face an Everest on Saturday but there is a reason people climb Mount Everest. It is an achievement to get to the top. SA is in need of heroes and a Lions win on Saturday will make the Lions heroes. That’s the carrot for the Lions. They owe it to themselves, and to their long time together, to defy the odds.
Natal were given as little chance then as the Lions will be given now, but Cocks, who usually wrote with great humour, wasn’t trying to be funny when he pointed out that Craig Jamieson’s team had a better chance than Western Province, Transvaal, Free State and the rest of the Currie Cup provinces who wouldn’t be contesting the decider.
I will join those who give the Lions little chance this week. The flight from west to east is more debilitating than the one from New Zealand to SA. The Lions haven’t been as good this year as they were in previous seasons when they contested the final, and the Crusaders showed ominous form in easily dispatching the second-best team in the competition on the log in their semifinal.
But the Lions, in looking for reasons why the critics can be silenced, as those of the 1990 Natal Currie Cup winning team were, needn’t look further than some of the history built up by Saturday’s opponents over the past two decades.
Perhaps using last season’s final, when the Crusaders travelled across the sea and through the time zones to win the decider in Johannesburg, would be a bit disingenuous. It was a monumental effort for the Crusaders to win a playoff game at altitude, but we will never really know what would have happened at Ellis Park had Kwagga Smith not been red-carded before half-time.
My view is that the Crusaders were well on top at the point when the Lions were reduced to 14 men, but the sending off still brought an imbalance to the game that left questions. Those questions might have taken a bit of fizz out of the Crusaders’ celebrations of their achievement.
The Crusaders team that the Lions should instead use as their reference point in searching for a reason why they can travel to Christchurch with some hope is the 2011 vintage that didn’t win the competition but fell at the final hurdle.
To refresh memories, that was the year of the Christchurch earthquakes and the Crusaders were forced to spend almost the entire season on the road. It is difficult to recall the figures now but more than 100,000 flying hours were racked up by Richie McCaw’s team that season, and they even played a home game in London (against the Sharks).
They travelled to Cape Town for their semifinal, won that and then headed back to Australasia to play the Reds in Brisbane in the final. That was a crack Reds team that had topped what was then the Super 14 log, and yet the Crusaders took them down to the last minutes on their home field in one of the few really epic finals of the Super Rugby era.
The Lions have a similar history — you could call them the South African version of Crusaders — to call them the poor man’s Crusaders would be unkind — in that they have a team that have stayed together for a long time and have overcome obstacles, such as being excluded from Super Rugby in 2013. With players leaving for overseas clubs at the end of the season, this could well be the last chance for this Lions team, which are now playing a third final.
They face an Everest on Saturday but there is a reason people climb Mount Everest. It is an achievement to get to the top. SA is in need of heroes and a Lions win on Saturday will make the Lions heroes. That’s the carrot for the Lions. They owe it to themselves, and to their long time together, to defy the odds.
Whiteley’s right, they will be on the field, so they do have a chance of doing that.
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