Currie Cup 2009!

[Michael Alexander]

Here we go again, my favourite Rugby tournament is about to kick off......... Who are you supporting...... post your gripes in here as the games play out...... who of you are on Superbru?

[Dalene Steenkamp (Coetzee)]

The Blue Bulls can try,
to Province we wave goodbeye,
the Lions lie down and cry,
but our flags hang high.

Our Harley girls are the best
don't bother lookin at the rest,
our Cheetah boys knows the game
the Currie Cup is our's again!

Cheetah's Cheetah's, we support you all the way
Cheetah's, the Currie Cup will come back  to stay.


The Sharks can swim in the sea,
the Falcons land up in a tree,
the other will all bend the knee,
we'll win again, you'll see.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx   

[Bertie Horak]

@ Mike - I am on Superbru. Playing in 2 pools.  Want to start a new one?
Oh and by the way - Weee-Peee champs this year!

[Diana Rudd (Boehme)]

This is WEEE PEEE's year.
I did the Superbru last time and actualy came in 2nd in my pool.

[Mike Voden (RIP)]

Hi Dalene, good words in your poem.

I'm sure you can put it to music and dedicate the song to Mike Alexander

[Dalene Steenkamp (Coetzee)]

Thanks Mike & Jenny,

  -  I am actually working on something like that..  on request from the blokes on the Cheetah Forum... from last year....  still have to do some work on it though in regards to the lyric and composition...  (Don't have all that much time  -  WORK WORK WORK)...

BUT  -  watch the Cheetahs tonight against the Griquas.....   !!!

xxxxxx

[Mike Stenson (RIP)]

I wonder where the ball is............

[Mike Stenson (RIP)]

Os joins Cheetahs staff
2009-07-10 09:01

Bloemfontein – Two-time World Cup champion Os du Randt is back in the South African rugby fold after joining the Cheetahs as their scrum coach.

Du Randt will not only help to raise young props and teach them the finer aspects of scrumming, but will also try to give the Cheetahs forwards more firepower.

He will nurture and groom promising young players including Baby Bok Coenie Oosthuizen and WP Nel.

[Mike Stenson (RIP)]

WP show welcome teeth
2009-07-11 21:02
Cape Town – It might be premature to suggest the cat is among the pigeons after only one round of the 2009 Absa Currie Cup.

Yet some interesting little markers were set down, all the same – and on the wrong end of them were the champions, the Sharks, and another team with a proud domestic record over the past few years, the Cheetahs.

Indeed, had the Lions been able to register a shock Highveld derby victory at Loftus after opening up a 13-point lead at one stage, the early form book might have been said to have been particularly emphatically toppled.

But the Bulls, last season’s runners-up and the Super 14 title-holders, restored some “sanity” to the opening weekend by clawing back for a less-than-postcard-perfect win.

Certainly the most jaw-dropping result of the opening round was Griquas’ stunning sacking of the Cheetahs in their Bloemfontein stronghold, with the hosts not even registering a consolation bonus point.

Griquas actually had the audacity to notch four tries for a full log haul of five points themselves and a cheeky tournament lead for at least one week.

It could even be for longer, though -- they are at home next Saturday to the newly-promoted (and already ominously beaten by Boland) Leopards.

Nevertheless, it remains hard to see the men from Kimberley sustaining a table-topping charge as the competition progresses, and maybe the really significant event thus far has been sleeping giant Western Province’s surprisingly comfortable 14-point victory over the Sharks at a soggy Newlands.

Bear in mind that, truckload of absent Springboks or not, this remained a very workmanlike Sharks team on paper, especially in the front five with three crusty internationals plus another regular in lock Steven Sykes.

And yet they were rather humbled in the engine room by a Province pack certainly gaining yards now in their quest to put to pasture a “southern softies” dubious mantle.

Fired astonishingly early by a dream debut try well within the opening minute for gnarly All Blacks second-row acquisition Chris Jack, the WP eight did a gradual, near-ruthless strangulation job on their rivals.

The set scrums were an appropriate indicator of hometown superiority: Province claimed what seemed at least one genuine heel against the head, once forced Rory Kockott into transgression with a skew feed under back-pedalling pressure, while Deon Carstens and Craig Burden being substituted with a good chunk of the contest left also illustrated their unlikely pain in this department.

What’s more, WP hit the breakdowns with zeal – Pieter Louw was a dynamo throughout -- and whenever bouts of handbags erupted, there were more blue-and-white-hooped combatants at the ready than you would normally expect from this traditionally docile lot.

Of concern to the champions’ coach, John Plumtree, would have been their way-too-rare incursions into the hosts’ 22, especially in the second period, and instead they relied on Kockott’s mostly unerring place-kicking boot to stay vaguely in the hunt for decent tracts of the game.

Province had a “machine” of their own, though, in 19-point Willem de Waal, who has got playing in inclement Cape Town conditions down to a rather fine art.

And when the rain relented after the break, there were occasional opportunities for WP to show off some creative new (Robbie Fleck-inspired, perhaps?) running lines with Morgan Newman a slippery customer at No 13.

It wasn’t perfect: Ricky Januarie is still not back to remotely near his best form at scrumhalf, and still offers the suggestion that he is at the midnight strawberry ice-cream too much. When Dewaldt Duvenage offered fresh legs in the position, his own passing was a tad wonky.

The Sharks at least ought to break their duck against Boland in Durban on Friday, while Province move on to a spicy encounter against their traditional foes the Bulls in Pretoria which will determine further whether their “grunt” renaissance is for real.

If big Duane Vermeulen is fit for the trip, Luke Watson’s side will be even further buoyed – not that either of Louw or Pieter Myburgh, on Saturday’s evidence, is willing to vacate a starting jersey in a hurry …

Next weekend (home teams first):

Friday: Sharks v Boland. Saturday: Griquas v Leopards, Lions v Cheetahs, Blue Bulls v Western Province.

[Bertie Horak]

Pity I missed the games, looks like it was gtreat - especially for my team!

[Mike Stenson (RIP)]

Currie Cup
WP pack in unfamiliar territory
2009-07-17 08:20
Johannesburg - The Vodacom Western Province forwards will travel to Pretoria for Saturday’s plum ABSA Currie Cup fixture of the weekend against the Vodacom Blue Bulls in what for them will be unfamiliar territory.

Usually when WP go to Loftus the big question mark centres on the Cape pack. The Province big men have long had a reputation among their adversaries for being soft, and both the Streeptruie and the Stormers have taken some frightful hidings in the upfront battles at the home of the Super 14 champions.

Saturday is different, however, and there might even be some who are expecting the WP pack to get the better of their opponents, who are without key men in Victor Matfield, Bakkies Botha, Pierre Spies and Danie Rossouw.

The Bulls do have Gurthro Steenkamp back after he was dropped by the Springboks, and Dewald Potgieter might have been the most underrated cog in the pack that won the Super 14, but WP have reason to be proud of the way that the pack has fronted up just recently.

Until a late change was made that impacted on momentum, the WP forwards did well against the British and Irish Lions – certainly better than any of the other provincial teams did against the tourists in the scrums and the tight-loose.

And last week, after a difficult start, the young front-row of Wicus Blaauw, Tiaan Liebenberg and Brok Harris, with that middle name being perhaps the key to their scrumming solidity, became more assured and impressive in their battle with a Sharks front-row featuring Jannie du Plessis.

With New Zealander Chris Jack showing that he is still good enough to add to his 67 All Black caps if his country needs him, which it might well find it does in the next few months, and former Lions lock Anton van Zyl playing a strong leadership role, WP do look to have one of the stronger tight fives in the under-strength phase of the Currie Cup.

That being so, and we do have to note that in the Cape, where everyone is so hungry for success, there is sometimes a tendency to anticipate success prematurely and forget the old adage that one swallow does not make a summer, there is one excellent reason why WP should even start Saturday’s game as favourites.

That reason comes by the name of Willem de Waal, a flyhalf rated highly for his accurate goalkicking but perhaps even more so for his ability to dominate a game with his lengthy tactical kicking boot. The last time the Cape team, as the Stormers, went to Loftus, De Waal had the full-strength Bulls struggling to counter what was effectively their own game in the first half of the Super 14 match.

Had it not been for the yellow card that removed Schalk Brits from the action at a crucial stage, during which the Bulls scored almost all their points, the Stormers could well have come away with a victory. In a season where the Bulls swept almost all before them, that would have been no mean achievement.

They could well do the trick on Saturday, and in emulating a feat they last managed in this competition at Loftus in 2006, take a strong hold on the competition.

While WP and the Bulls are looking to establish themselves as early front-runners, the Sharks, Cheetahs and the Lions are under early pressure after defeats last week. Of those, the team that should feel the most comfortable is the Lions, who would not have been expected to win at Loftus, and actually showed an unexpected tenacity before going down late in the game.

The Cheetahs were unexpected losers to Griquas, and in that came a warning to the Sharks, who will be aiming to pick up the pieces from the Newlands disaster last week by beating another Cape team, the Boland Cavaliers, in Durban on Friday night.

At this early stage of the competition the minnow teams, because they have played together more often and have not lost players to national duty after competing in the Super 14, are more dangerous than they tend to be later on, when injuries eat away at their depth.

The Cavaliers tend to be more difficult on their home ground, but they will feel that against a young Sharks team that is still struggling to find itself, they do travel up the coast with an outside chance of what would be a major upset.

[Michael Alexander]

Good luck to the awesome Cheetahs and to the WPeeeee teams for today....

[Bertie Horak]

Mike's Cheetahs started off well today.  Led 19-0, but the Lions are fighting back.  Half time Cheetahs lead 19-13.

Mike A must be sitting on the edge of his seat!

[Bertie Horak]

I know of at least one very disappointed orange-clad Oranjemunder and a very disappointed lady in the Kalahari.  Cheetahs lost 31-22. 
My team WP playing against the Bulls next.  Hope I'm not disappointed!!!!!

[Michael Alexander]

Go WPPPPPPPPPEEEEEE! 



Friggin choking Cheetahs, ruining my Saturday!!!!!