Why Lions are South Africa’s only hope

It hasn’t been that way all year but the Emirates Lions are at last starting to look like the South African flag bearers in Vodacom Super Rugby that they’ve been since 2015.

Let’s say straight out that this isn’t saying much. The Jaguares will win the South African Conference. You can take that as read. Even if the South American team loses to the Cell C Sharks in Buenos Aires in their penultimate league match on Saturday night, it is fanciful to think they might stumble in their final game against the Sunwolves. They just need one more win to be sure of top spot.

So the race is now on for second spot in the conference, in other words, being South Africa’s top team. And that is wide open even at this late stage. The DHL Stormers remain in the last position they’ve been in for several weeks but they host the Sunwolves this week, while the Bulls and Sharks both face tough games overseas. The Stormers could leapfrog them both if they pick up a full house of five log points, which you’d expect them to do.

And then it will come down to their final match against the Sharks in Cape Town to determine whether they secure a top-eight spot that will secure a place in the playoffs. But unless there’s some kind of miracle effected in the Stormers’ medical room that can somehow reverse the impact of too many physical games in a row, the chances of the Stormers getting further than an away quarterfinal are now almost zero.

We don’t know how long Siya Kolisi and Pieter-Steph du Toit will be out for, Eben Etzebeth looks almost certain to be out for the rest of the Super Rugby season with a broken hand. Cobus Wiese looks likely to join him with a hamstring injury. The Stormers have no locks left standing. Scarra Ntubeni missed the Lions match so the Stormers were down to their third and fourth hookers.

What were areas of strength for the Stormers have now suddenly become areas of potential weakness. We use the word ‘suddenly’ but if you resort to the exact science called hindsight, then perhaps there’s nothing really sudden or unpredictable about it - if you play as physically as the Stormers do, and it was brutal for the few weeks before they went to the Lions, then the chances are you will suffer injuries.

The Stormers over the past few seasons have had to suffer more injuries than most, and perhaps there’s a reason for it. Perhaps there is a reason why South African teams in general seem to always be struggling with injuries.

The local conference might not be the best in the competition in terms of quality, but it is probably the most brutal in terms of physicality. Speak to some of the players and they will confirm it.

Rugby in general though is a sport that, by its nature, delivers a high attrition rate.

In the grand finale to the European football season at the weekend, we saw two teams, Liverpool and Tottenham, who might both have felt they struggled with injuries in some positions during the season, face one another in Madrid. If either line-up differed from the selection you would have imagined at the start of the season, it would be by a fraction.

That’s often not the case when you get to the business end of a rugby season. So let’s do the exercise that illustrates it. Here is the Stormers’ top team when everyone is fit: Damian Willemse, Sergeal Petersen, Ruhan Nel, Damian de Allende, Dillyn Leyds, Josh Stander, Jano Vermaak, Juarno Augustus, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Siya Kolisi (captain), JD Schickerling, Eben Etzebeth, Wilco Louw/Frans Malherbe, Bongi Mbonambi, Steven Kitshoff.

Of that team, only Willemse, De Allende, Leyds, Stander, Malherbe and Kitshoff are currently fit and available to play.

Okay, so Herschel Jantjies has come through and established himself as the first choice scrumhalf now and may be the best in his position currently playing inside the country, and Jaco Coetzee is the business as a No 8 too (he played No 6 against the Lions). But that’s still half a team out.

The top overseas clubs can afford bigger squads so they’re able to manage their resources better. Speak to some of the players who have played in Europe and they will tell you one of the things they enjoy there is that they aren’t expected to play too many weeks in succession.

Of course, the Stormers aren’t the only team to have suffered because of injuries, or from the need to rest players who will be involved in the World Cup. Some players such as RG Snyman and Marco van Staden have returned from being injured earlier in the season. They’ve shown since their return from injury how much they were missed when they were absent. Van Staden played a significant role in turning the tide the Bulls’ way in their draw in Auckland at the weekend.

Imagine though the Bulls team with Lood de Jager, Hanre Pollard, Duane Vermeulen, Jesse Kriel and company all in it. You look at their full strength team and you understand why so many backed them to be South Africa’s top team this year. Like the Stormers they have made mistakes along the way, but the injuries have played a big part in leaving them behind the eight-ball with two matches to play.

The Lions and the Sharks have both benefitted from having top players return over the past month. Jean-Luc du Preez and Ruan Botha have made a significant difference to the effectiveness and physicality of the Sharks’ pack.

The general perception is that Warren Whiteley, who plays only sporadically, is the key figure for the Lions along with Malcolm Marx, but in the past few weeks that perception might have started changing. Kwagga Smith has been nothing short of outstanding and the Lions somehow just seem to buzz more when he is present.

The Lions have had several players return elsewhere too, and hopefully Whiteley will be back soon too. They were unlucky to lose to the Sharks in Durban - two intercept tries cost them - otherwise they’ve shown impressive form recently, and perhaps the most important thing is that they appear to be getting incrementally better each week.

They have two tough games to come - Hurricanes at home and Bulls away - which is why they still aren’t overwhelming favourites to be South Africa’s top team. Nobody is. Somehow though they are the side that appears to be getting it together at the right time, and their injury flow is in the opposite direction to some other teams, in the sense that they’re getting players back, not losing them.

If they do make the playoffs, remembering too that they have experience of winning quarterfinals and semifinals, they would be the most likely of the South African teams to pose a proper challenge. The caveat, of course, is that the playoff games they’ve won in the past have all been at Emirates Airlines Park, and they’re unlikely to be playing there after the league phase. So it’s all relative.

Super Rugby is a survival course, even more so now that the tournament has headed into the uncharted territory of a 17th consecutive week. Of the South African teams, it looks like the Lions are the side surviving best.

Weekend results

Blues 22 Vodacom Bulls 22

Rebels 15 Waratahs 20

Sunwolves 19 Brumbies 42

Chiefs 40 Crusaders 27

Reds 23 Jaguares 34

Cell C Sharks 17 Hurricanes 30

Emirates Lions 41 Vodacom Stormers 22