With less than a month to go until the first whistle of the 2017 Western Province Super League season is blown, teams are out on the park shaking off their holiday rust and putting their bodies through the ringer as they condition themselves for the long season ahead.
Friendly matches are well underway and with the President’s Cup and Gold Cup competitions as reward for teams that put in the hard yards throughout the year, sides have everything to play for.
Heading up Parow-based NTK RFC, who have returned to their former name after breaking ties with Northlink College, is workhorse-captain Brandon Grant, who had a bumper 2016 season and was selected to run out for the WP Emerging side, which dominated at their inter-provincial tournament to walk away undefeated champions in 2016.
With trial chukkas and the first shaky friendly matches out of the way, he now looks to steer his side to finishing in the top half of the SLA log and regaining former glories along with their former name.
“Our main focus for our pre-season training was strength and conditioning. Last year October, when the season concluded, we had a very short break before training at the club got back underway. In January we picked it up again after the holidays and have been working hard to get the guys fit and ready with tough fitness sessions.
“We expect the same from the league as we have every year. It’s incredibly tight in SLA and it has got to the point where every team has the structures in place behind the scenes and have a professional approach to their training so we are seeing teams even out as far as conditioning goes and what it comes down to in the end is differing skill sets more than anything else. We have set ourselves the goal of finishing in the top eight this year and we feel that that is an achievable, realistic goal. Right now we are a very new team together and we need to focus on gelling and clicking on the field and if we can get that right we will see good things coming from this side,” he said.
One should never write a side like NTK off, even though they may have experienced some lean years as of late. They have slogged it out in relegation battles, clawed their way back into SLA after a few years in the SLB, been relegated again and again received promotion. It has been a rollercoaster ride for a side with a proud and long history in the province.
Last year it looked like they would be facing a drop to SLB once again but with only a few games left in hand they did what was necessary to see their side free of the relegation zone, winning some vital points and showing that they had more fight in them than many a side gave them credit for.
In many ways their story is reminiscent of sides like Hamilton and False Bay RFC who spent years in the up-and-down struggle trying to get back to the top leagues.
Those teams are now considered giants in SLA.
“I’ve been at the club for all of my rugby playing career. I’ve had 68 first team caps with 54 as captain. On the field I see myself as a leader not in that I do a lot of talking but rather that I put in the hard work and hope that my players pick their game up and do the same. Moving forward I probably have a good four or five years of playing left in me but after that I definitely see myself getting involved behind the scenes,” said Grant.
“The club has a strong committee and we’ve brought in some new faces to help move us forward and I wouldn’t mind taking up a role as coach or manager or being somehow involved in the committee.
“With so many young guys coming through on the team you sometimes feel like an uncle or step-dad and a lot of players, especially the under-20s coming through are always looking for advice. They are fresh-faced in the club scene and it’s always nice imparting some of what I have learnt on them.
“I think we are moving in the right direction despite losing to St George’s in a friendly at the weekend. The game was a very controversial one and we lost 35-26. We were missing our main centre pairing and a couple other players but look, friendlies are there to allow you to chop and change and test out combinations based on what the coaches have available to them.
“Two weeks ago we had a nice outing at Uni-Mil as well just to take some contact. Our first team has close to 10 new players and these games are good for us to see how they all fit in and how we play together so we are very positive and optimistic about the year ahead. We feel like we’ve done what we need to do to stay out of that relegation zone and now we just need to trust in our training.”
“Having said that, we’re not too stressed about the way the game played out at the weekend and we have Tygerberg this weekend at Ravensmead so we just plan to pick it up from here and move forward,” said Grant.
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