Cape Town’s passionate rugby public have spoken – with their cash – and what they have said is that there is nothing better than the most treasured North versus South derby, writes MARK KEOHANE.
More than 40 000 are expected at Cape Town Stadium on Saturday evening as John Dobson’s Stormers look for an unprecedented seventh successive win in the Vodacom URC against Jake White’s Vodacom Bulls.
A week ago, the Stormers hosted the Champions Cup winners La Rochelle from France and, despite Europe’s best sending their strongest matchday 23 to Cape Town, just 12 500 paid to watch the Stormers’ famous last-minute 21-20 win.
La Rochelle, made up of French, Kiwi, Australian, Fijian and South African players, are a club team good enough to make the World Cup playoffs. Some of international rugby’s biggest names were on show, on a sun-kissed afternoon, and those names included three Springbok World Cup winners for the Stormers.
For all the pre-match hype, the rugby public stayed away. Perhaps it was the weather, the lure of the beach, the 3pm kick-off, or a lack of education about the Champions Cup, given SA teams were only included in the competition for the first time last season.
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Most likely, it was economics and asked to choose where to spend the cash, between Europe’s best and the old enemy from up north, the latter was always going to be first prize.
The Stormers are loved in Cape Town, but there is some serious support for the Bulls, who have so much Western Cape DNA among their players and coaches.
Willie le Roux, Canan Moodie and Kurt-Lee Arendes were all schooled in the province. Stedman Gans and Embrose Papier are Cape-born and moved to Pretoria on rugby scholarships in high school, and prop Wilco Louw was a Stormers favourite before heading to Harlequins en route to the Bulls.
Bulls boss Jake White spent many a year in Cape Town and his sons were educated at Bishops, and his assistant coaches Gary Gold, Andries Bekker and Chris Rossouw have a rich history with the Stormers, the latter two as players and Gold in management.
The Bulls recent investment into Boland means there will always be a strong Cape influence, so for many a Bulls player it is as much a home game as one on the road in the season’s loaded travel schedule. Saturday’s kick-off is also prime time, at 7pm.
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South Africans are still wrapping their heads around watching rugby in the Republic on the 23rd and 30th December. The Stormers have marketed the December matches as the ‘Summer Series’ and last year, the public responded with excellent turnouts for derbies against the Sharks and Lions.
The big one remains the Bulls and for White and his Herd, the mention of the Stormers is the red flag that gets every one of them raging and charging.
The quality of players on display is immense. Both teams have World Cup winners in their lineups and both enjoy the luxury of some of the country’s most promising talent.
It is a huge game, in the context of the SA Shield, the URC standings and Bok aspirations. The individual match-ups are compelling, the counter-attacking ability of the teams is easy on the eye, and players on both sides love the collisions.
These are two particularly well-balanced teams but the reality is that the Bulls, for all their brilliance at home, have experienced only heartache at Cape Town Stadium.
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Dobson’s dominance over White in the shadow of Table Mountain is four from four. No team in the past three seasons has lost as many times in Cape Town to the Stormers as the Bulls (six).
The Capetonians lost their first home match in the URC to the Lions in 2021, and since then they have not lost to anyone else at home in 27 matches – except for Ireland’s Munster, in last season’s league match and in the final. Cape Town Stadium is not an easy place for any visiting team to get a result.
This season’s form would suggest the visitors will end their losing streak but history suggests it will be a ‘Super Seven’ for the hosts.
Whatever the result, the Stormers as hosts, and South African rugby in general, is already the winner given the crowd.
The turnout is an emphatic statement that the love for the North-South rivalry is as intense as it has ever been, even when played on the 23rd of December on a summer’s night in Cape Town.
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