Yesterday the CC match between the Bulls and the Stormers started 30 minutes late because of the atrocious field conditions resulting from a raining deluge in Pretoria and the match was abandoned at halftime.
I cannot remember that this ever happened before - there was a delay in the start of the 1995 WC test against the French in Durban - but the match was eventually completed despite the rain preceding the game - but unlike yesterday the rain did not continue during the game and the conditions did not get worse as a result. If that game was abandoned the Springboks would not have been in the final against NZ and apparently Luyt insisted that the game proceeded and it was in fact completed.
Anyway the reason that I wanted to watch the game was to see what Willemse at flyhalf would produce, but he never played in the half game despite the team selection indicating that he would start at flyhalf. Despite the playing conditions WP scored 4 tires and in six games played they ended up on top of the log with 5 points attained in every game they played in.
Next week the semi's will be between the following four teams:-
1 WP (1) against the Bulls (4) in Cape Town
2 Sharks (2) against the Lions (3) in Durban.
Will be interesting to see how the returned Springbok squad members perform in those matches, Yesterday Jantjies did play, but he definitely deserve no rating higher than so-so and he showed one real deficiencies in the game he played in - for instance he still regularly ran a few steps towards the 12 before passing the ball. Bosch for a change played at flyhalf and Du Preez at 12 and both were not really good enough in performance.
