Pumas and Griquas hungry for Currie Cup glory

One thing that has become clear in this year’s Carling Currie Cup is that the ‘smaller’ unions – those not playing in Europe – cannot be taken for granted, and the belief and hunger now flowing through the veins of the Griquas and Pumas players is going to make them hard to stop in the last three weeks of competition.

Griquas are third on the log and the Pumas fourth, with just the Sharks and Bulls ahead of them. At least one of these sides is going to make the semi-finals, as they play each other in Kimberley on Saturday, but they will both go through if Western Province fail to beat the Sharks in Durban.

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For the Pumas, the success of their season has been based on the realisation that they cannot just rely on their forwards to grind opponents down, and they have produced some fine attacking rugby with ball-in-hand.

“Our forwards were our go-to and they are still one of our strong points, but we said that we must play balanced rugby. We can’t just rely on our forwards for 80 minutes,” ever dangerous Pumas fullback Devon Williams said on Wednesday.

“The engine must rest a bit as well, so we have spread the workload. We are also using the kicking game more and overall we are just playing with more ball.

“When we played in Super Rugby Unlocked last year we got exposed to playing against the very best guys, Springboks included. We saw that we can beat them, but we just needed to rectify the small mistakes that were costing us.”

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Griquas wing Daniel Kasande also said there was a link between last year’s experiences, and all the narrow defeats they suffered, and their strong showing in this year’s Currie Cup.

“Not much has changed in terms of our system and structure from last year, but we had a lot of narrow losses then, things would just not go for us at the end of matches,” Kasande said.

“So since then we have been fine-tuning our play and getting in sync with each other. Being together now for two seasons, you can see the chemistry in how we play.

“Before, every time we went into a competition we were the new boys and you get a bit of cold feet. But once you are in with the big boys for a while, you grow in confidence. You start to feel that you can dominate.”

The way Griquas and the Pumas have contributed to the competition, one hopes many of their players are voted into the all-star Currie Cup team – chosen by the public – for the newly-created Carling Champions Match on November 6.