The Super 14: hanging in the balance

This one is being typed straight into the browser textbox in an embarrassed, screaming hurry. My man friday’s mother got sick, and I had to get the chores done all by myself for a change.

It wouldn’t be so bad but yesterday I got drunk enough to smoke cigarettes, cutting myself a little too much birthday slack, and today the god of nicotine was punishing me.

Some days are like that. I skipped lunch and scarfed down a whole fish just before midnight. It leaves me feeling hectic, septic and dyspeptic.

Kind of like I did after watching the Chiefs get their arses handed to them on a plate by the Lions 27-33 in Johannesburg, which was angrier but less emotionally involved. My man friday is a good fellow who never lets me down, and he’s a Chiefs fan no less… only five minutes before he heard I had been asking him if he needed a hug, teasing him mercilessly as I would expect him to tease me if my team had played like that… then his perspective was widened suddenly and significantly, just as my own was narrowing, and me doing little more than exporting my skull’s vindictive mood.

Right now his mother is fighting for her life in a Hamilton hospital, having been rushed to specialist care from some Bay of Plenty backwater, while his senior colleague, diddums, is late filing after some bad sashimi.

I felt awful.

So I’ll make this gesture at least on his behalf, and bag the Chiefs no more than necessary… which, seriously, should be not bagging them at all, unlike what I did last week.

The Chiefs played their hearts out all season. They beat the best and lost to the worst. They are a lovable but still bloodthirsty bunch of highway bandits one minute, playing the kind of heady, sublime rugby you remember for years, and Keystone Cops the next as their hare-brained, overambitious schemes come unstuck all at once.

So they didn’t make it. Neither did the Bulls, Highlanders, Reds, Force and Brumbies. They all had their moments… with the fans on their feet, howling at the moon, as one… they just ran into teams that beat them, that’s all, beat them on the day, in the everlasting and ever-varied fight over a leather ball we call rugby.

The, Lions and Cheetahs? Well… last week’s unforgiving, heartless sentiments, they’d be surplus to requirements. Non-viable organisms. On the same Dark Continent they still occupy, 20,000 years ago they would have been torn apart by predators whose bellies were already full, just for sport.

But by my own reasoning, the Lions and Cheetahs also had their moments. And if beating the Chiefs is the season highlight, you’d hope the Lions were at least AIMING higher. Not that the Cheetahs even managed that. A win over the Reds in Bloem was their only fond memory of 2008 so far. If they go on to beat last year’s defending champions on Saturday, and in doing so neatly punctuate the Bulls’ fall from grace, they will still have a long way to drag themselves before they can think about challenging one of the serious outfits.

But not many eyes will be turned to the Free State this weekend. Most South Africans will be looking to Johannesburg and Durban. The Stormers will travel up to Ellis Park to see if they can’t do what the Chiefs couldn’t, while the Chiefs will travel back down to Durban and try to redeem themselves by pulling the shades on the Sharks’ season.

Believe me, they can do it. We’ll find out what we need to know about the Sharks, that’s for sure. I hope any New Zealanders who ever bagged the Chiefs will be able to live with themselves, when in light of our semifinal hosting interests they find themselves cheering on the same team they were so recently bagging… screaming go the mighty Chiefs in Auckland and Wellington, if the Hurricanes or Blues need their help to qualify.

The Blues beat the Highlanders 40-15, and the Hurricanes beat the Force 21-10. Their match-up this Friday at Eden Park will set the tone for a hellish final round.

The Crusaders will have little trouble with the Highlanders, if they bother to field their strongest fifteen… and they won’t… but even their second fifteen can keep opposition in the kill zone long enough for Robbie Deans to empty a lethal All Black bench. That’s what they did in Brisbane against the Reds on Saturday, trailing by not much until the final quarter-hour, then unleashing Dan Carter, Ali Williams, Andy Ellis and Corey Flynn to score a flurry of late points and win 27-21.

Brisbane is a godforsaken city where strange things happen, but the Crusaders losing to the Reds would have been just too outlandish… even for a place that was created to give the word outlandish true meaning. When convicts were being allowed to develop a big enough breeding stock in the necessary isolation, I wouldn’t have liked to meet the Bris who that lot were the bane of.

The Waratahs drew 13-all with the Stormers in Cape Town yesterday, leaving themselves still needing a win to qualify, and they will go to Brisbane this weekend to try and secure a playoff spot. That will be a bloodbath worth taping. Border clashes between the Reds and Waratahs are legendary. The Brumbies and Force will fight it out in Perth, too. Expect a high body count.

My suggestion of a Trans Pacific Union last week earned a slew of South African requests to unsubscribe. I dutifully removed their addresses from the database, wondering if I would ever come to regret their departure.

And the same applies to the Super 14 competition… if we cut them loose and embarked on a new course, might we regret that decision?

Well sure, it’s possible, but a competition the fans are obviously rethinking shouldn’t be afraid of change. It should recognise the need for it, in fact. The business at hand being the final push for playoff spots is an exciting diversion, but in 2008 there seem to be a few more weighty outcomes in the balance.

Join me in a heartfelt prayer, dear reader, that the teams who deserve victory this coming weekend don’t have the results stolen from them by bad officiating, and that a good family gets to see its mother’s smile again.

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