currie cup round up

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Less than 30 minutes after they had been outfoxed by Western Province at Ellis Park on Saturday and beaten 36-23, the faces of Frans Ludeke and Wikus van Heerden told different stories.

Ludeke was looking ahead and Van Heerden was bitterly reflecting on a lost chance by a team that knows better and can play with more discipline.

The Lions, the form team in the Absa Currie Cup if you are to believe the hype that has surrounded them these past weeks, faltered when they had the
opportunity to secure a place in the semifinals.

Pressure, it has to be said, cooked them and they fumbled and fudged their way through the match, frustrated and confused by a defence led with
authority by returning Springbok De Wet Barry.

The race for the Absa Currie Cup semifinals is not over, but the Holy Grail of a home semifinal has edged a little further away.

They are second in Section X of this truncated and silly phase of the Currie Cup, three points behind the Blue Bulls, who won on Friday night, but, in these desperate financial times, a home semifinal is worth a small but much-needed fortune.

There is still every chance they can play at home in the semis, said Ludeke. “The only thing we can do is focus on the next game. If we start worrying about the game we lost then we definitely won’t make it. That’s negative pressure and you make more mistakes and you start panicking and we won’t panic.”

The most significant thing that happened at Ellis Park on Saturday afternoon was the emergence of Zhahier Ryland, the quickest man in South Africa, according to tests, who scored a hat-trick. Two of RylandÂ’s tries were from breakaways and one from a set move, but the pace of the man struck fear into the Lions and brought a knowing grin from Province coach Kobus van der Merwe and his captain, Neil de Kock.

“He’s an exciting talent,” said De Kock, “to lay a hand on him is quite difficult. He’s a very exciting prospect with ball in hand. If we can create opportunities for him, especially when it comes to turnovers and he gets the ball in space, then he’s very dangerous. He’s got a massive future ahead of him.”

“He came through our club system,” elaborated Van der Merwe. “Last year he played in the Vodacom Cup, but didn’t feature in the Currie Cup squad.

“This year again he played in the Vodacom Cup and we phased him into the Currie Cup team in the friendlies and the qualifying stages. With Egon (Seconds) not 100 per cent on top of his game, he’s not quite where we want him to be, and Tonderai’s position being on the right wing, Zahier hasn’t let us down in the competition so far.

“We knew that the Lions are playing a much more enterprising game than they did in the friendly match earlier this year,” added Van der Merwe.

“We thought that if we could control field position and not make errors in our area, then we could get turnovers because they try to move the ball around so quickly.
Hendrik Gerber was absolutely awesome today. We got two good tries from turnovers, which we expected.”

“It was a good defence,” said Van Heerden. “They closed us down well and when you look at the amount of big hits they put in compared to ours, it shows the speed with which they came off the line. It wasn’t something we weren’t prepared for.

“Yeah, they were close to the offside line, but I think we put ourselves under pressure by playing too deep. We should have kept our structure better. We know that Province are one of the better sides off broken play and we gave them those opportunities.”