RUGBY NEWS - “When a pretty girl sits on your lap for two hours, it seems like a minute. When you sit on a hot stove for a minute it seems like two hours. That is relativity.”
That is the line Albert Einstein armed his hapless secretary with for when random people came knocking on his door to learn more about this secret of the universe he had just found.
It is also a line the average South African rugby fan can easily associate with. It’s almost a month since the Springboks sealed a series victory over England in Bloemfontein, but there has been very little for anyone of us to get excited about since. It’s not even been a month, but it already feels like a year.
It is also way too late in the year for any South African Super Rugby team – bar of course the Lions – to turn their 2018 season into a pretty girl for their fans. No, most of us are stove-sitters and the best we can hope for from the last weekend of round-robin action in this year’s tournament is for our teams to switch the heat setting to ‘bearable’.
The Sharks have a chance to sneak into the last wildcard qualification spot with a win against the Jaguares on Saturday combined with a loss for the Rebels against the Highlanders earlier in the day.
It is a scenario that looks far more likely this week than last – but with the treacherously classy Jaguares now acclimatised to SA conditions and not playing at altitude, it is in no way a given.
Even if the Sharks do squeak into the playoffs, their fans won’t be the happiest they’ve ever been. The fixture will be almost unwinnable - being away to the seemingly unstoppable Crusaders, and qualification will put a mask on a season that contained quite a few low points. The Sharks of 2018 had some brilliant wins, but nowhere near enough of them to make this a vintage year.
