The Lions and Bulls are the only unbeaten teams in the Currie Cup after two rounds of action.
The Lions and Bulls have both staked their claim to be considered favourites for the Currie Cup title, after two big wins on the opening two weekends of the competition.
Of the country’s “big four”, the two Highveld teams have gone with a different selection strategy to their coastal rivals and it looks to be paying off with both picking up bonus point wins to take an early lead on the Currie Cup log.
The Lions started with two home games, and comfortably swatted aside the Sharks 46-5 and Western Province 40-19, while the Bulls opened their campaign in Cape Town with a 48-23 win over Western Province, before thrashing the Sharks 64-0 back at home over the past weekend.
Both the Lions and the Bulls have loaded their Currie Cup squad with players who are largely considered backup to their United Rugby Championship (URC) team, while the Sharks and Western Province have mostly backed inexperienced youngsters for the competition.
And that has made a notable difference in their fortunes based on the results over the first two weekends of action.
In the past weekend’s match the Lions’ entire starting 15 were players who had featured regularly over the previous URC campaign, although none are considered regulr starters, while Western Province only had a handful of players with decent URC experience.
International experience
The Bulls also went with a strong lineup, boasting players with international experience such as Marvin Orie (Springboks) and Jaco van der Walt (Scotland), and a host of URC regulars, while the Sharks featured a few players with URC experience, and a large number without.
It will be interesting to see which player strategy pays off when it comes to the start of the coming URC season, when a number of backup players will need to be utilised due to the unavailability of Springbok players, who will still be in international action.
But in the Currie Cup, the Bulls, who sit top on 10 points, only ahead of the Lions on points difference, are currently the two teams to beat and with them now coming up against the other teams in the competition, we will gain a better understanding of where they truly stand.
Of the other four teams it is hard to gauge if they will be able to challenge the top two, as they have all picked up one win, with the Kavaliers beating the Cheetahs, Pumas beating the Griquas, Cheetahs beating the Pumas and Griquas beating the Kavaliers over the first two weekends.
The Bulls will now host the Pumas at Loftus on Saturday afternoon, while the Lions travel to Wellington to take on the entertaining Kavaliers in what should be another Sunday afternoon classic.
The other two games see the Griquas up against Western Province in Kimberley on Friday, and the Sharks host the Cheetahs in Durban on Saturday.
