Last year may have been a grueling year for South African rugby, but the good news is that underdogs often emerge victorious when all expectations are against them. Will that happen in 2017? It’s worth a try.
The 2017 rugby year is about to start again, but you would be forgiven for going into it with a bit of apprehension or anxiety.
Last year was a nightmare year for rugby in South Africa, with only the Lions enjoying any real success.
We can either grumble about it, or we can get back into the thick of things with newfound enthusiasm. We can make 2017 the year of new beginnings, by embracing the underdog tag.
Whether you support the Stormers or the Springboks, expectations are lower than usual right now and that is okay. I’m not saying we must become satisfied with mediocrity, but instead appreciate where we are and enjoy the process back to the top.
When I say ‘we’ I of course mean both fans and the teams. Now is the time to rediscover our enjoyment of the game of rugby. Forget the negatives, fight the urge to be cynical.
The Stormers are extremely unlikely to win the SuperRugby title this season, but there is still a great deal to be excited about. There is a new era developing under coach Robbie Fleck, who had to endure a baptism of fire last year. He has the opportunity to create a new culture at the franchise, and release the potential of young players looking to become new Newlands favourites.
There are senior players like Eben Etzebeth and Damian De Allende, who forfeited lucrative oversees end of year contracts to focus on the starting the year strong in SuperRugby.
No disrespect to Australian rugby, but SuperRugby has always been about competing against the best New Zealand has to offer. The Stormers get to do this in 2017, and this is something to be excited about. The only way to be the best is to compete against the best, so giving their all against teams like the Crusaders, Chiefs, Hurricanes and Highlanders as underdogs is going to be very exciting.
Being the underdog isn’t about just being the unlikely winner. It is about being without burden or pressure, something we put ourselves under all too often in South Africa. With such a mindset new strengths can emerge, and new trajectories set with regards to success.
This applies to all of SA’s SuperRugby teams right now, and it may apply to you too this year. We need to forget about what’s holding us back in the past and focus on making big strides going forward.
To prove this let’s refer back to the Lions. They fell out of SuperRugby completely, but then they started to embrace their underdog status. They started to focus on what they had, enjoy what they were doing again and before long the results started to turn around. The rest is history, as they go into the 2017 rugby season as South Africa’s no.1 rugby team.
According to the Chinese, it is the year of the Rooster. Let’s make 2017 the year of the underdog in South Africa instead, and enjoy the process of progress from one week to the next!
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