EVEN the bad times are good. I once spotted this phrase clumsily tattooed on the heavily muscled arm of a panelbeater. It looked like a jail job. Somehow it captures the attitude required against Queensland tomorrow.
The blokes are back from Van Diemensland and the Land of the Long White Nightshirt, dead-beat and jetlagged. They are looking forward desperately to their bye next week. But meanwhile they've got to take on a honed and relaxed outfit with an extraordinary record of winning in Durban – one of those occasions a final when the competition was still called the Super 10.
It's a big ask. After lifting themselves magnificently off the deck in New Zealand – having got there via a weird combination of constipation and bizarre bad luck - they have to do it again, knowing within themselves that they have not yet clicked. And feeling tired, mentally as much as physically.
But even the bad times are good. Adversity brings out the best in us. In spite of what the bloggers say, Andy Goode just might get through the game without injury or a yellow card. He just might click into place. And it's fascinating that Stefan Terblanche will be running at centre.
At fullback the veteran Terblanche has been having a season as good as any he has played. Running with the ball in hand he has shown penetration with a capital P. He could turn out to be just what our jaded backline needs in the centre, an antidote to the flatfooted receiving and crabwise running that have so marred our game.
Tomorrow could turn out pivotal. Will we go into our week's bye with more points in the bag and an incentive to rediscover the dash and verve that have lain dormant all season? Can we sustain the resorgimento of the Wellington and Otago matches? Even the bad times can be good.
Meanwhile, a glut of overseas club rugby on our TV screens this weekend. Magners League tonight, the Guinness Premiership tomorrow and Sunday. This will be a feast for the connoisseur. Northern hemisphere club rugby seems to reach new heights every season.
Who remembers the Easter club tournament we used to have here in Durban? All the Springbok and provincial greats from across the country, turning out for their clubs. That really was something. I know you can't directly compare northern club rugby with our own – not in this professional era – but how nice if we could at least try to approximate it. And what a deepening of rugby talent it would mean.
But overseas club rugby is icing on somebody else's cake. Our gritty reality is Queensland. A few nights ago I was in the Bootleggers Bar and a leading light of the Florida Road rugby colloquium was ordering cr̬me de menthe Рfrappe! He might have been anticipating events rather, but expectations are high. Stand by for a Florida Road feu de joie. This is, of course, when we fashion catapults from the ladies' knicker elastic and shoot out the streetlights in celebration. Even the bad times are good!
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