The matter of SA's top rugby team

Ours is a universe filled with mystery, a never-ending expanse of time and space interweaved with incomprehensible questions that will forever spook far outside the grasp of the feeble human mind.

Even the brightest among us will forever remain helplessly baffled by Nature's secrecies.

We don't know what dark matter is, despite it making up 85% of the observable universe. We lack even the slightest comprehension of the laws that would govern the formation of matter and antimatter. We have no understanding of what happens beyond a black hole's event horizon.

We also have no idea who South Africa's strongest Super Rugby side is this year.

Our mortal intellects can put forward passable reasons for why each one of our teams should be considered not our best, yet at the same time we know that it is physically impossible for us not to be wrong in at least one instance.

In a world that no longer harbours the considerable minds of an Einstein, a Hawking or a Danie Craven, we are left with no choice but to have a go at this unfathomable conundrum ourselves.

Let's jump right in there then, shall we?

The answer to our question of who SA's best Super Rugby side is should, on the face of it, be the same as to the very answerable question of who won when the SA sides played each other.

If that case our best side is demonstrably the Bulls. The Pretoria outfit has wiped the floor with every local opponent so far this year, beating the Stormers by 37 points, the Sharks by 23 and the previously untouchable Lions by 18.

In their Captain America outfits they have a grip on their countrymen that not even the overwhelming humidity of a late Durban summer could let slip two weeks ago.

Except that they can't be.

The Bulls can't be South Africa's strongest Super Rugby team, because when it comes to representing us elsewhere in the competition they are inexplicably - but without a doubt - our worst.

For reasons that will forever remain unknown to science, the Bulls lose even the most basic grasp of what the game of rugby is about whenever they hear a lineout call that is not made in Afrikaans. Like particles at a sub-atomic level, their oval-ball wherewithal pops untraceably out of existence at the slightest suggestion of an International accent.

A team that can't play rugby can't possibly be considered our best rugby team, and against the foreign Chiefs and Jaguares (twice) they proved to their fans that they haven't a clue. Australia's Reds must be licking their lips.

So what next? Shall we have a look at the South African Conference standings?

The Sharks are comfortable leaders after seven games played. They've won only four of their fixtures, but so strong is their affinity for the bonus point that they sit three points clear of their compatriots and in third place on the overall log.

Are they the best South African side in the competition then? Well, no.

Their three losses this season all came against local opponents, and on two of those occasions they were playing at home. Their only derby win came on a wet Friday night up on the Highveld, conditions they shouldn't expect to see anytime soon again.

A team that can't win within its own country’s borders can’t be considered to be our best team, and against the Stormers and the Bulls (twice) they proved to their fans that they haven't a clue. Future Super Hero opponents must be licking their lips.

And now? Should we take the reasonable stance of saying that our best team this year is the same as our best team of the last three years until they are officially dethroned at a conference-trophy handover?

The Lions, thus far in 2019, have won and lost the exact same number of games as both the Bulls and the Sharks. They still possess the same brains-trust that got them into last year's final, and are directly descendant from the team that made the two before that. All of that pedigree can't be lost in the space of one off-season.

Or can it?

This is not the Lions team of old, and for proof of that you need to look no further than the points against column on the tournament log. In terms of points conceded the men from Joburg find themselves only behind the struggling bottom three log-dwellers (the Sunwolves, Brumbies and Chiefs).

As for points difference, they finished the 2016 season on +186, 2017 on +322 and last year on +84. After seven games in 2019 (and despite winning more games than they've lost) they are on -24. They are fresh off a 37-point drubbing by the Sharks and are just settling in at the first of many hotels they’ll stay in on their almost month-long tour of Australasia. Their hosts must all be licking their lips.

There may still be a miracle turnaround for them in the second half of the season, but even that would still leave them mid-table and nowhere near our (or their own) undisputed best.

And that leaves us with the perennially under-performing Stormers. Even if they were on top of the South African points-ladder (and they definitely are not) they still have a whole lot of history to explain away before we'd enter them into any "best of" competition.

The Stormers have ended top of the overall log on two previous occasions, and both times they failed to even make it past the semifinal stage. They've never managed to make even a small bit of progress as a team without the hype surrounding them at least doubling. You can’t ever call the Stormers good, they tend to believe you.

The Capetonians are bottom of the South African conference and they are still to face the forbidding threats posed by - among others - the Rebels, the Crusaders, the Highlanders, the Bulls and the Sharks. They can't be our best, simple mathematics just doesn't allow for it. Everyone is licking lips in this particular case.

And all that leaves us where exactly? Is it possible for a country as proud as South Africa not to have a best team? Is this another one of an infinite universe's ultimate imponderables?

Let's hope so.

In an infinite universe, all things are possible. As South African Super Rugby fans that gives us at least a small glimmer of hope.

https://www.supersport.com/rugby/super-rugby/news/190410_The_matter_of_SAs_top_rugby_team