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Defending Currie Cup champions Western Province secured a home semifinal by beating the Blue Bulls at a dark and stormy Loftus Versfeld yesterday evening, but it wasn’t the way they thought they would do it.
The game was called off at half-time due to inclement weather that left the Loftus pitch waterlogged with a threat of thunder and lightning expected in the second half.
But it wasn’t before John Dobson’s men had done the job by winning all six of their round-robin games in a four tries to one victory.
The result means Province get to repeat yesterday’s match against their hosts in the second semifinal in Cape Town next week, while the second-placed Sharks will be up against the Golden Lions in the earlier semi in Durban.
The weather was going to be a factor long before the game began because a classic dark and stormy Highveld thunderstorm had been predicted to hit while the match was supposed to be on.
That said, the expectation of the resultant conditions’ effect was that it would help the home team fight the fight in the clinch, as it were, against a Western Province side that has dominated the competition by scoring freely in pretty much all six of their round-robin games.
However, the hosts – a typical altitude team – proved woefully inadequate in the monsoon conditions, going out with the wrong plan and playing as if the rain hadn’t fallen. To this end, few players epitomised this than fly half Manie Libbok.
Within the first five minutes, Libbok had managed to grass a tactical kick with nobody around him; grubber a restart; slip in attempting a touch-finder; and nearly contribute to the first try of the match by getting charged down by opposite number Josh Stander.
With the Bulls fly half so jittery, it looked like he’d never played in the wet stuff, and the visitors couldn’t help but take heed of the approach needed in the game – which was tight and playing in the hosts’ half – and pick up confidence from how clueless their opposition was.
Few facets of the game suggested confidence more than the visiting scrum, where Springbok tight head Wilco Louw, fresh from being relegated from the bench for last weekend’s match against the All Blacks, took out his frustrations of poor Matthys Basson.
Such was the carnage wreaked upon the unstable Bulls scrum that they had conceded six scrum penalties by the 18th minute, one of those resulting in a penalty try and a sin-binning for the outgunned Basson.
The Bulls’ backpedalling scrum also contributed to Province’s second try, by Kobus van Dyk, after the hosts conceded a tight head in being shoved off their own ball, with possession being recycled to the flanker to score.
But after seemingly getting the memo, which was to replace their dry weather fly half with their wet weather fly half (Tinus de Beer) and paring down notions of skip-passing their way to victory, the Bulls did stem the flow somewhat with a try of their own.
Flanker Ruan Steenkamp obliged with said try in the 24th minute, after the Bulls had put in a marathon of one-off pick and goes until he was in close enough range to force his way over.
But De Beer also found out the hard way that handling the soapy ball was a reality when his failure to gather a Herschel Jantjies hack ahead a metre in front of his try line allowed winger Sergeal Petersen to pounce for his eighth try of this Currie Cup campaign.
Jaco Coetzee got the bonus points try the defending champions were looking for by bursting through the middle of the maul and sprinting to the try line untouched, and the officials had seen enough of a game that promised so much but ended up so lopsided.
The Bulls will be happy for the “rematch” in next week’s semifinal because no team wants to go down to such a schoolboy performance.
SCORERS:
Blue Bulls 7 – Try: Ruan Steenkamp Conversion: Tinus de Beer
Western Province 34 – Tries: Kobus van Dyk, Sergeal Petersen, Jaco Coetzee Conversions: SP Marais (3) Penalties: Marais (2)
