Fitting end to momentous year

The Blue Bulls, the standard bearers of South African rugby and some would say the driving force of the Springbok success in the British and Irish Lions series and the Tri-Nations, added the domestic trophy to the Super 14 title they won so convincingly earlier in the year.

That they won 36-24 and so many people were talking afterwards of what a closely fought final it was only underlines just how good this Bulls team really is. A 12 point margin would not normally be regarded as a close game and there was seldom less than that number of points separating the two teams in a match where the Bulls led from start to finish.

The closest the Cheetahs came to the Bulls was the six point deficit that was arrived at with Nico Breedt’s converted try with just under half an hour to play, but Morne Steyn quickly quelled any nervousness in his team with some well taken goal-kicks that made the lead more comfortable again.

It was partially Steyn’s goal-kicks, and the role that they played in winning the game for the team in light blue, that made this such an apt finish to the season. Steyn was the difference between the Springboks and the Lions back in July, he was the man who closed out the home leg of the Tri-Nations for the Springboks, and if it were not for his excellent pressure penalty kick at Newlands in the semifinals, the Currie Cup final would not have been played at Loftus.

And yet he is a player who only snuck into the Springbok group for the Lions series through the back door. The preferred flyhalf at the start of the season was Ruan Pienaar, who ended the South African season at flyhalf for the Sharks.

Another player who arrived in the international season on the outside was Heinrich Brussow, who was not part of the squad selected for the Lions Tests. He only got a call-up when it was clear that Schalk Burger was not going to recover from injury, and even then apparently only after quite a bit of debate.

Brussow and Steyn were the stand-out newcomers for Springbok rugby this year, and the pair of them stood out like beacons under the floodlights in the Highveld spring dusk on Saturday. Brussow was the man who kept the Cheetahs in the game when they really shouldn’t have been.

But when the dust had finally settled on another pulsating final and yet another triumph for the Blue Bulls, what made the final most fitting was that in many senses the manner which the Bulls won was expected – and it fitted the script of so much of the rest of this rugby year. The team that played the least rugby won the match.

If ever evidence was provided that possession is no longer nine tenths of rugby lore it was this match, with only one team doing any playing in the first quarter – and yet trailing 24-0 after that period. Let’s doff our hats to Fourie du Preez, a genius in every sense, for his role in the three tries that were scored off turn-over ball when the Cheetahs were throwing everything into attack.

If Du Preez is not the South African player of the year when the award is made later on Monday, then it will be a travesty of justice. If he is not the IRB Player of the Year for 2009, then that will also be a travesty of justice.

Morne Steyn would never have been in position to win the second Test against the Lions with a long range penalty had it not been for Du Preez’s role in keeping the Boks in the game in the first half, and in the Tri-Nations so much that worked revolved around Du Preez.

It was fitting too that the man who made the difference in their greatest triumph, the 2007 Super 14 final, should also score two excellent tries in his final game for the union. It obliterated memories of the 2005 final, when Bryan Habana's yellow card may well have cost the Bulls the game.

But the Cheetahs would probably not have lost the final were it not for the silly rugby they played in the first half. Had they been cleverer, had they been smarter, had they not presented the Bulls with opportunities through their policy of spreading it wide and playing helter-skelter rugby, they might be champions this morning.

That has very much been the story of the rugby year. The teams that finish the game afterwards boasting that they played the most rugby tend to come second. And that is particularly so when you play against a team like the Boks and the Bulls, who both have Du Preez and Steyn in position at halfback to control the situation.