DURBAN - Sharks coach Robert du Preez knows what it is like to be on the wrong end of a result that everbody predicted would go the way of the favourites, and he knows what strings to pull in his team before Saturday's Super Rugby quarter-final against the Lions in Johannesburg (kick-off 2.30pm).
He was the scrumhalf when the Northern Transvaal Rugby Union had printed the labels for the celebratory bottles of champagne ahead of the Currie Cup final in 1990. Craig Jamieson’s Natal team saw things differently ... even if the Bulls had smashed them 28-6 in the final game of the round robin stage.
Mind you, Rudolf Straeuli, the current CEO of the Lions, was in the same Bulls team in 1990, so he has felt the pain of underestimating your opponents in a knock-out game.
That 1990 win was not the first time the Banana Boys, as they were known in those days, upset the efforts of a major rugby union that was pre-empting a Currie Cup final result and was getting its administrative ducks in a row.
It was back in 1984, and table-topping Western Province were set to host the final. There was a minor matter of a semi-final in Durban between Free State and the winners of the B Section, Natal, and it did not occur to the WPRU to halt printing the tickets for the final (WP v Free State).
Only for Wynand Claassen’s Natal team to play the game of their lives and soundly beat Free State to earn their place in a final that they almost won in Cape Town. All those wrongly printed tickets ... and that was before the days of paper recycling!
But it has also worked both ways. In 1993, when Natal were now a force to be reckoned with, they were red hot favourites to beat Transvaal in a Currie Cup final at Kings Park, only to lose in a major shock.
A more recent case of the Sharks upsetting the apple cart was in 2013 when they lost their final round robin match to WP in Durban and then in the final beat Province in Cape Town. But Sharks fans with long memories will also recall 2000 when a heavily depleted WP team captained by never-say-die Corne Krige won a Currie Cup final in Durban. Nobody had given them a chance.
More recently, there was the case of the Sharks travelling back from a quarter-final win in Australia to win a semi-final against all the odds at Newlands, but then were too exhausted to stretch the Chiefs in the final in Hamilton a week later.
The point is that anything can happen in a one-off game if one of the teams for some reason gets a psychological edge. I think Johan Ackermann and Straeuli are too wise to let complacency sink in, but then you never know what goes on in the sub-conscious.
“It is a final for us, and that makes it different to any of the other games we have played against the Lions,” Du Preez said on Thursday after naming a team that has just once change, and a significant one too in that he has recalled Curwin Bosch to flyhalf at the expense of Garth April.
“The guys were disappointed in our effort last week against the Lions in Durban but that is done and dusted and we have a specific game plan that will suit our strengths and hopefully that will pull it through for us,” the coach said.
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