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Lions win to go top of the table, which was inevitable as that's what the Sharks would've wanted

The Lions’ Jaco Kriel

The last round of Super Rugby ended up being Moving Day again at the Crusaders’ expense for a second year in a row.

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The Lions leapfrogged the seven-time champions to finish top of the overall Super Rugby standings, thanks to a 27-10 victory at the Sharks in Durban on Saturday.

Defeat for the Crusaders at the Hurricanes earlier in the day had left the Sharks in a peculiar quandary – win and face a trip to Christchurch in the play-offs, or lose and head to Johannesburg for another clash with the Lions.

With that in mind, defeat was perhaps preferable for the Sharks on this occasion, while victory for the Lions sees them avoid a meeting with the Highlanders in the quarter-finals.

Garth April gave the Sharks an early lead but the Lions went into half-time with a 13-10 advantage thanks to tries from Malcolm Marx and Andries Coetzee, before Jaco Kriel crossed in the second period as the visitors racked up 14 unanswered points.

It should be noted that, on their way to the top of the overall standings, the Lions have not played any fixtures against New Zealand opposition during the regular season.

In the day’s other all-South African clash, the Stormers won an 11-try thriller against the Bulls 41-33.

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The Stormers will host the Chiefs in the quarter-finals but will need to shore up their defence after an open encounter in which the teams scored three first-half tries apiece.

The visitors pulled clear at the beginning of the second half at Loftus Versfeld through touchdowns from Siya Kolisi and Damian Willemse, but Piet van Zyl and Jesse Kriel made the Stormers sweat by reducing the gap to 34-33 with 10 minutes to go.

It was not until the 77th minute that Seabelo Senatia finally put the result beyond doubt, getting on the end of a Dillyn Lleyds chip to cross for the decisive score.

Super Rugby Quarter-Finals

Brumbies v Hurricanes in Canberra

Lions v Sharks in Johannesburg

Crusaders v Highlanders in Christchurch

Stormers v Chiefs in Cape Town

 

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J
JW 6 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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