South African Sports News – 20 July

All Blacks give Boks another rugby les­son
New Zealand scored their second con­sec­ut­ive vic­tory over South Africa in as many weeks with a con­vin­cing 31–17 tru­imph in their Vodacom Tri-Nations fix­ture in Wellington on Saturday. The All Blacks outscored the Boks by four tries to two and thor­oughly deserved their win against a dis­join­ted South African outfit.

To their credit the Boks did put up a bet­ter dis­play than they did last week­end in Auckland when they were com­pre­hens­ively out­played in all facets of the game to go down 32–12. They were solid in the set-pieces this time out and though one got the impres­sion the All Blacks still won the col­li­sions, there wasn’t much in it.

The reason the Boks lost this game was their lack of speed about the field. New law changes have made rugby a much quicker sport and the South Africans are clearly strug­gling to adapt to the new format of the game after dom­in­at­ing the Tri-Nations a year ago. The pon­der­ous South Africans were also not helped by the incon­sist­ent ref­er­ee­ing of Alain Rolland.

The French offi­cial was cor­rect in yel­low card­ing lock Danie Rossouw (pic­tured left) for kick­ing out at a New Zealand player on the ground early in the match, but then a shoulder charge or tackle without the use of arms should also war­rant a yel­low card, and there was none issued for a blatant Rene Ranger infringe­ment on Zane Kirchner towards the end of the first half.

Rossouw’s ban­ish­ment to the side­lines ended any hope of their being any phys­ical ascend­ancy for the Boks, and in the time he was off the field the All Blacks scored two tries to take a 10–0 advant­age. After that the Boks were always play­ing catch up rugby, and although Rossouw did cross the tryline just before the inter­val to keep his team within strik­ing dis­tance, there was only really going to be one win­ner in this match.

New Zealand scored their open­ing try out on the left when Ma’a Nonu dot­ted down after six minutes to put his team 5–0 up. The men in black scored their second try minutes later when poor defend­ing from the Boks paved the way for Mils Mulialina to get his name on the scoresheet.

Things could have been a lot worse for the Boks if All Black fly­half Dan Carter had remembered to bring his kick­ing boots with him. The nor­mally deadly accur­ate Carter struggled to come to terms with the strong wind he was kick­ing into and con­sequently sqandered 10 points in the first half. Carter’s imper­fec­tions were the main reason the Boks were able to go to the inter­val just 13–7 adrift.

The South Africans came out strongly in the second half, clearly intent on tak­ing the fight to their oppon­ents but the All Blacks quickly regained the ini­ti­at­ive as Rene Ranger forced his way over the line on the left. Piri Weepu banged over a pen­alty in the 50^th minute to make it 21–10 and when Israel Dagg added a fourth try for the hosts 10 minutes later, any chances of a Bok fight­back were snuffed out.

To their credit though the Boks never gave up try­ing and enjoyed their best pas­sage of play in two matches in the last quarter, but when Schalk Burger scored in the 75^th minute to reduce the defi­cit to 14 points, it was merely a con­sol­a­tion effort that came too late to make a difference.

Although the Boks matched the All Blacks in terms of phys­ic­al­ity in Saturday’s encounter there is ulti­mately little point in hit­ting a ruck hard when the ball has already been moved on from the con­tact point, which was so often the case in this match. The ques­tion of whether all the older play­ers in the Bok team are equipped to play the new, faster game must now be raised because on the evid­ence of this match they may not be.

However, they will still have a chance to prove the doubters wrong when they take on the Wallabies at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane on Saturday in their next Vodacom Tri-Nations encounter. Hopefully Ruan Pienaar will start at scrum­half in that match for in Wellington there was a marked improve­ment in the pace at which the Boks played the game when he came on to replace Ricky Januarie.

The All Blacks will no doubt be thrilled with their win and with two bonus point try wins in as many starts, they are well on course for another Vodacom Tri-Nations title. Saturday’s game kicks off at 12pm and the South Africans will be des­per­ate for a win after a dis­ap­point­ing start to their 2010 Tri-Nations campaign.

Scorers
New Zealand 31 – Tries: Ma’a Nonu, Mils Muliaina, Rene Ranger, Israel Dagg. Conversion: Dan Carter. Penalties: Carter (2), Piri Weepu.
South Africa 17 – Tries: Danie Rossouw, Schalk Burger. Conversions: Morné Steyn (2). Penalty: Steyn.

Sharks power past Bulls
Two tries from left wing Lwazi Mvovo (pic­tured left) helped the Sharks to a well-deserved 34–28 vic­tory over the Vodacom Blue Bulls in their Absa Currie Cup encounter at the Absa Stadium in Durban on Saturday after­noon. The home side outscored the vis­it­ors by five tries to three and moved to second on the log with seven points, one ahead of the Bulls who now drop down to third.

It was an excel­lent win for the Sharks who began their Currie Cup cam­paign with a dis­ap­point­ing 40–34 loss to GWK Griquas in Kimberley last week­end. The KwaZulu-Natalians were only able to show glimpses of their poten­tial in that game, but it was a dif­fer­ent story on Saturday as they pro­duced some spark­ling rugby to upset their more fan­cied opponents.

The sco­reline flattered the Bulls who man­aged to dot down in the final minute of the game while fly­half Jacques-Louis Potgieter added a con­ver­sion to give his side a bonus point. The Sharks had the bet­ter of the exchanges through­out and could have won by a much big­ger mar­gin had they not been been forced over the touch­line four times for what could have been tries.

However, it must be noted that the Bulls were miss­ing no less than 12 Springboks who are on Tri-Nations duty and still man­aged to be com­pet­it­ive through­out the 90 minutes.  The men in blue are always a danger to any side and the defeat is more likely to strengthen their resolve than to dis­cour­age them for the remainder of the sea­son. But the day belonged to the Sharks who had much to rejoice over after their sur­prise loss last weekend.

JP Pietersen, who had been side­lined with injury for a couple of months,  came through Saturday’s match unscathed and looked hungry for action while his winger team­mate Mvovo demon­strated a mix­ture of superb pace and power which the Bulls had no answer for. The Sharks’ brain­trust can also take heart from the excel­lent per­form­ances from Craig Burden, Jacques Botes and 19-year-old Patrick Lambie who plays with a matur­ity far bey­ond his fledgling years.

The Bulls star­ted strongly against the Sharks with a great build-up and a deft pass in the mid­field by Stefan Watermeyer send­ing Stefan Dippenaar through a gap and even­tu­ally led to the open­ing try by eighth­man Gerrit-Jan van Velze. However, the Bulls were soon on the defens­ive as the Sharks began to put them under pres­sure with some pen­et­rat­ing moves.

Keegan Daniel looked to have scored but the TMO ruled he was out over the touch­line when he dot­ted down and Lambie exper­i­enced the same fate minutes later. However, the Sharks even­tu­ally got their first score when Burden exploited space at the front of the line-out and jinked his way through the Bulls defence for a well-taken try.

A 30^th minute pen­alty from Potgieter put the Bulls back in front, but that was the last time the Pretoria out­fit would enjoy a lead. Burden should have scored a second try shortly after­wards, but an excel­lent tackle by Gerhard van den Heever saw his hip touch the touch­line mak­ing it impossible for the TMO to award a try.

Lambie regained the lead for the Sharks when he slot­ted a pen­alty four minutes before the break, and the KwaZulu-Natalians were denied a try again when Mvovo kicked and chased, only for the bounce to elude him without a defender in sight. However, the power­ful winger even­tu­ally got a try early in the second half when he bumped off Jaco van der Westhuizen on his way to the tryline.

Potgieter kept the Bulls within strik­ing dis­tance with another pen­alty before Burden again was denied by the TMO as he stepped out of bounds with the tryline beck­on­ing. The Sharks then seized the ini­at­ive as Keegan Daniel shrugged off the atten­tions of Van Velze after a Lambie break to score. With the Sharks 24–11 ahead the game should have been over as a con­test, but the Bulls kept fight­ing and were rewar­ded for their determ­in­a­tion when burly Dean Greyling forced his way over the tryline, car­ry­ing three defend­ers on his back.

Potgieter added the con­ver­sion and slot­ted another pen­alty to close the gap to three points, but the Bulls’ comeback was thwarted when Mvovo held onto a pass after quick hands by full­back Stefan Terblanche to score his second try in the corner. The Bulls, now des­per­ate for points, threw cau­tion to the wind and were caught out on the counter attack as Daniel chipped and col­lec­ted to seal the win for his team.

The vis­it­ors did man­age to secure a late bonus point when Van den Heever dot­ted down in the right hand corner to score, but it wasn’t enough to pre­vent the Sharks from scoop­ing five points in a vic­tory they thor­oughly deserved cour­tesy of their enter­pris­ing play.

John Plumtree’s men will face the Pumas in their next Currie Cup out­ing at the Absa Stadium on Friday even­ing and should have far too much fire­power for a side who are new­comers to the rigours of top flight domestic rugby. Kick-off is at 7pm.

Scorers
Sharks 34 – Tries: Lwazi Mvovo (2), Keegan Daniel (2), Craig Burden. Conversions: Patrick Lambie (3). Penalty: Lambie.
Bulls 28 – Tries: Gerrit-Jan van Velze, Dean Greyling, Gerhard van den Heever. Conversions: Jacques-Louis Potgieter (2). Penalties: Potgieter (3).

Other res­ults (from left to right)
Pumas 37 – Platinum Leopards 32
Cheetahs 33 – Griquas 26
Western Province 32 – Lions 0

Upcoming fix­tures
Friday
Sharks vs Pumas – The Absa Stadium, Durban – 7pm.
Leopards vs Western Province – Olen Park, Potchefstroom – 7.10pm.
Saturday
Griquas vs Lions – GWK Park, Kimberley – 3pm.
Blue Bulls vs Cheetahs – Loftus Versveld, Pretoria – 5.05pm.

Currie Cup stand­ings (after two rounds)
Pos  Team            Points
1.     WP                8
2.     Sharks           7
3.     Bulls              6
4.     Griquas          6
5.     Lions              5
6.     Free State      5
7.     Pumas           5
8.     Leopards        2

Oosthuizen rock­ets to fame with Open win
Rank out­sider Louis Oosthuizen (pic­tured) stunned the golf­ing world over the week­end when he won the Open Championship at St Andrews in Scotland on Sunday, bag­ging golf’s biggest prize by an incred­ible seven strokes with a superb dis­play of front-running. It was the biggest win­ning mar­gin in the world’s old­est and most pres­ti­gi­ous tour­na­ment since American Tiger Woods tru­imphed by eight strokes in 2000.

The 27-year-old South African star­ted the final day on 15-under par, four strokes ahead of his nearest rival, England’s Paul Casey. Playing solid rather than spec­tac­u­lar golf, Oosthuizen was never really threatened as he carded a clos­ing 71 for a 16-under total of 272. England’s Lee Westwood closed with a 70 to fin­ish second while Rory McIlroy (68), Henrik Stenson (67) and Casey (75) all tied for third one stroke behind Westwood.

“It’s unbe­liev­able,” said Oosthuizen. “It was dif­fi­cult hav­ing such a big lead to keep calm and focused, but I kept calm all the way. I’m glad I had eight shots on 18! I think I cramped up a bit with the putter. It’s just amaz­ing,” he added. Oosthuizen came into the tour­na­ment ranked 54^th in the world and it was only his second top-level tour­na­ment vic­tory in a career which began in 2002. The quietly spoken Mossel Bay res­id­ent became only the fourth South African to win the Open after Bobby Locke (1949, 1950, 1952, 1957), Gary Player (1954, 1968, 1974) and Ernie Els (2002).

It was the biggest upset win in an Open Championship since American Tony Lema tru­imphed on his debut at the Old Course in 1964. Oosthuizen pro­duced rounds of 65, 67 and 69 to set up his win­ning pos­i­tion and only Casey with rounds of 69, 69 and 67 man­aged to keep in touch, although he fell away badly at the end with a dis­ap­point­ing 75. Casey paid trib­ute to Oosthuizen, who only found one of St Andrews’ many bunkers all week.

“That was an unbe­liev­able per­form­ance,” said Casey. “He was very calm, played won­der­ful golf, and all credit to him. I’m dis­ap­poin­ted, but the emphasis has to be on that per­form­ance, because that was fant­astic,” he added.

Top 10 fin­ish­ers
272 – Louis Oosthuizen (RSA) 65 67 69 71
279 – Lee Westwood (Britain) 67 71 71 70
280 – Rory McIlroy (Britain) 63 80 69 68
Henrik Stenson (Sweden) 68 74 67 71
Paul Casey (Britain) 69 69 67 75
281 – Retief Goosen (RSA) 69 70 72 70
282 – Robert Rock (Britain)  68 78 67 69
Sean O’Hair (USA)  67 72 72 71
Nick Watney (USA)  67 73 71 71
Martin Kaymer (Germany) 69 71 68 74

SuperSport edge Rabat in Caf Cup
Premier Soccer League (PSL) cham­pi­ons SuperSport United recor­ded a nar­row 2–1 win over Morocco’s FUS Rabat in their first-leg Caf Confederations Cup game at a freez­ing Atteridgeville on Saturday night. SuperSport appeared to be head­ing for an easy vic­tory when defender Morgan Gould (pic­tured) opened the scor­ing after just eight minutes with a power­ful header.

However, they missed numer­ous oppor­tun­it­ies to increase their lead as they dom­in­ated the open­ing period, with first Anthony Laffor and then Brent Carelse fail­ing to find the back of the net from close range. Seven minutes after half-time Rabat were on level terms when a power­ful burst down the left flank from Ibrahim Ziadi ended with a sizz­ling shot slam­ming into the roof of the net.

Just when it seemed SuperSport would be facing the unen­vi­able pro­spect of mak­ing the ardu­ous away trip to Morocco in two weeks time for the second-leg while on equal terms, Rabat con­ceeded a pen­alty in the 73^rd minute and Laffor made amends for his first-half miss by scor­ing the win­ning goal with a power­ful spot kick.

With only a single goal lead and hav­ing con­ceded what could be an import­ant away goal, SuperSport face the pro­spect of a tax­ing ordeal in order to qual­ify for the round robin stage of the tour­na­ment. Coach Gavin Hunt, how­ever, poin­ted to the fact that he was field­ing a some­what depleted com­bin­a­tion  and he expects some con­sid­er­able improve­ment in his side’s play as the new sea­son gains momentum.

Jordy’s num­ber one after J-Bay win
Jordy Smith (pic­tured) grabbed the lead in the 2010 ASP World Title Race rank­ings after advan­cing to the quarter-finals of the Billabong Pro J-Bay by defeat­ing Australian rookie Owen Wright in Round Four at Supertubes in Jeffreys Bay on Saturday.

The 22-year-old Durbanite, ranked num­ber two com­ing into the only ASP World Tour event to be staged in Africa, over­took nine-times World Champion Kelly Slater, who was earlier ous­ted from the event, to become the first South African to head the rank­ings which determ­ine the annual ASP World Title since Shaun Tomson back in the 1980’s.

“That’s cool but there’s still a long way to go,” Smith cau­tioned when informed that he had moved to No 1. “Kelly (Slater) may have lost today but he won’t be out of the title race until the hooter sounds at Pipe at the end of the year. Still, it’s a great pos­i­tion for me to be in and I’ll look to con­sol­id­ate with a solid res­ult here at Jeffreys,” he added.

Meanwhile, South African wild­card Sean Holmes, who caused the upset of the event by elim­in­at­ing Slater in Round Three, con­tin­ued to spring sur­prises by defeat­ing former three-times World Champion Andy Irons of Hawaii in Round Four. Holmes’ uncanny affin­ity with the Supertubes lineup helped him to slot into a deep tube ride that was good enough to enable him to join Smith in the last eight.

The quarter-final lineup pits Smith against Brazilian Adriano de Souza, Holmes against Australian Bede Durbidge, Taj Burrow of Australia against American Dane Reynolds and Damien Hobgood of the U.S. against the win­ner of the all rookie matchup between Australian Adam Melling and Hawaian Dusty Payne.

Sinyabi too good for Gwayana
Sizwe Sinyabi sur­prised many pun­dits when he out­poin­ted defend­ing cham­pion Mfundo Gwayana at the Nangoza Jebe Hall in Port Elizabeth on Sunday to recap­ture the South African light fly­weight title. The 12-round con­test was the second time these two pugil­ists have squared off against one another after they fought to a draw at the Orient Theatre in East London in June last year.

In a rather unevent­ful con­test, Sinyabi notched up his 20^th vic­tory against eight defeats and two draws with nine of his wins com­ing by way of knock­out. In his first fight since the June 2009 draw, Sinyabi main­tained pres­sure on Gwayana and knocked him down in the elev­enth round to seal the win. The loss saw Gwayana slide to 11–4-1 (6 KO’s).

Meanwhile, South African junior light­weight cham­pion Sipho ‘Tsunami’ Taliwe looks set to con­tinue his win­ning ways when he defends his title against former cham­pion Godfrey ‘The Punisher’ Nzimande at the Nasrec Indoor Arena in Johannesburg on Sunday.

The power punch­ing Taliwe des­troyed pre­vi­ously undefeated Warren Joubert in his last out­ing and will be look­ing to pro­duce a sim­ilar per­form­ance against Nzimande. Taliwe is the pro­ver­bial ‘banger’, hav­ing knocked out 10 of his 13 pro­fes­sional oppon­ents while suf­fer­ing only two defeats – both by decision.

Nzimande (20–3-2; 12 KO’s), while pos­sess­ing a decent punch of his own, is more of a boxer than a banger and Sunday’s clash should be an inter­est­ing con­test between the bru­tal power of the cham­pion and the slick box­ing skills of the chal­lenger. Another impress­ive win for Taliwe would undoubtedly sent the stage for more luc­rat­ive, inter­na­tional bouts, but he will be wise not to under­es­tim­ate his more exper­i­enced oppon­ent who has been punch­ing for pay since 2001.

Caster keeps on the win­ning track
World 800m cham­pion Caster Semenya’s return to com­pet­i­tion has con­tin­ued with another win – this time at the Savo Games in Finland. The 19-year-old South African power­house coas­ted to vic­tory in her second race since being given the green light to con­tinue com­pet­ing as a woman.

Semenya (pic­tured) com­pleted Sunday’s race in two minutes, 2.41 seconds – almost two seconds faster than at Thursday’s comeback race at the Lappeenranta Games. Semenya always looked in con­trol against a rel­at­ively weak field but was still seven seconds slower than the national record she set when win­ning gold at the world cham­pi­on­ships in Berlin last August. The teen­ager now heads home to South Africa to con­tinue train­ing and is expec­ted to return to race in Europe next month.

South African Links:
2010 World Cup Stadiums
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Accommodation in South Africa

Photo Credits:
Photo – Danie Rossouw: Source – www.dailymail.co.uk
Photo – Lwazi Mvovo: Source – www.scrum.com
Photo – Louis Oosthuizen: Source – www.qatar-masters.com
Photo – Morgan Gould: Source – www.sportydesktops.com
Photo – Jordy Smith: Source – www.magicseaweed.com
Photo – Caster Semenya: Source – www.australian-news.matters.com