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Rob Houwing, Sport24 chief writer
Cape Town – Heinrich Brussow catapulted his way into contention for a Springbok starting berth against the British and Irish Lions in a few weeks with a superlative performance for the resurgent Cheetahs in Bloemfontein on Saturday.
Several of his team-mates, it is true, were not that far behind as the Vodacom Super 14 wooden-spoonists stunned the log-leading Sharks by 31-6 and four tries to nil to slightly set the cat among the pigeons in terms of the semi-finals race.
But the livewire open-side flanker was a shoe-in, nevertheless, for man of the match as he served notice that his single cap gained on the Bok end-of-year tour in 2008 hardly represents the depth of his international aspirations.
Brussow was simply everywhere, his engine remaining in top gear right to the finish of one of the competition’s more notable cases of David unceremoniously pole-axing Goliath.
As late as the 73rd minute in an individual showing of unrelenting majesty, he was making massive yards to thump Stefan Terblanche to the deck; within the last five he was cheekily trying to hurdle a ruck near the Sharks’ line for a try of his own to add to their humiliation at an old bogey venue.
Before that, of course, Brussow – high on chaotic energy and spirit if not necessarily kilograms and centimetres – had been playing a standout role in his primary chore of shovelling the back swiftly from breakdowns, engineering turnovers, slowing down the visitors’ ball and also making telling intrusions into the Cheetahs’ deadly marauding over the advantage line.
Cleaned up
It was mightily impressive stuff from Brussow, especially as he was in open-side flank competition with (more by necessity than design) effectively two Sharks fetchers in Keegan Daniel and Jacques Botes.
It is clear that, from a loose forward balance point of view, the Durban-based side are missing the rugged edge provided by blind-sider Jean Deysel, who is on the mend from injury and likely to reinforce the Sharks very, very timeously for their run-in fixtures.
Then again, imagine how Brussow, Hendro Scholtz and company might have cleaned up even more smartly on the deck had the Sharks not been served by the dual, play-to-the-ball credentials of Daniel and Botes!
Certainly, if the Cheetahs No 6 keeps up anything like this level of endeavour and prowess for his own team’s closing assignments, he is going to give the Bok brains trust every reason to suspect they could do with an out-and-out “mole” in that position.
As it is, the customary first-choice national loose trio of Schalk Burger, Juan Smith and Pierre Spies is often considered by some critics to be a tad too “upright” to consistently steal opponents’ possession on the turf or recycle their own with key swiftness.
And shouldn’t Burger, now, be starting to look over his shoulder a little uncomfortably?
Doses to his ribs
His own form has certainly suffered a bit with the Stormers’ bilious disappearance off the radar in recent weeks, with controversial Luke Watson week after week the most constructive and industrious loosie for the embattled Cape side.
Burger’s hand skills and general awareness on attack have not been their best this year, and he was in an unusually galling position during the defeat to the Brumbies in rain-lashed Canberra on Saturday: a “hunter” hunted, as he kept receiving doses to his ribs of his own legendary smash-back, hard-tackling medicine.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but on the day you have to say it was emphatically Heinrich Brussow 1, Schalk Burger 0 in the Bok open-sider race.
Now it is up to the big fellow, so peerless and unchallenged two or three years back, to respond to this rookie threat to his throne …
