No holds barred as South Africa's finest go toe-to-toe

DERBY DAYS: RUGBY CURRIE CUP FINAL:South African teams don't hold back during international clashes, and the same ferocious determination is evident in their domestic game

FROM THE first day of November, this Sunday, the best rugby players in South Africa will begin to turn their attention to the Springboks’ coming trip to the Northern Hemisphere – and particularly the visits to Paris on November 13th and Dublin on November 28th.

First, though, for many of the travelling squad there is the small matter of the climax of the domestic season – and the destination of the coveted gold trophy, along with the equally valued bragging rights.

It may have started as a small, inter-town affair 125 years ago, but today – now almost exclusively involving provincial sides – it’s home to some of the best players in the world, who divide their time between the Currie Cup and the Super 14.

That is, when they are not on international duty, meeting teams such as the Lions – the ones from Britain and Ireland, rather than Johannesburg.

One of Saturday’s Currie Cup finalists, the Free State Cheetahs, came up against the British and Irish Lions during the recent tour, with the visitors escaping from their third fixture with their unbeaten record intact, though only because outhalf Louis Strydom saw his late, 45-metre drop goal attempt brush the wrong side of the left upright.

It was the day Stephen Ferris and Keith Earls ran in tries as the Lions scorched into a 20-0 lead in as many minutes, before a second-half revival, led by flanker Heinrich Brüssow, left the Lions barely escaping with a 26-24 victory.

On Saturday, the Cheetahs will again look to their backrow to lead the charge against Pretoria’s Blue Bulls, especially as Brüssow will have Juan Smith alongside him – though prop CJ van der Linde is now at Leinster, of course, as will hooker Richardt Strauss be immediately after this weekend’s big clash.

The attrition rate up front is expected to be high on Saturday.

While the Cheetahs have big names among their forwards, the Bulls have an awesome front eight, including Bakkies Botha, Victor Matfield, Danie Rossouw and Pierre Spies.

And with Fourie du Preez at scrumhalf, Morné Steyn at 10 and Wynand Olivier and Bryan Habana providing the danger out wide, it’s not difficult to understand why the Bulls are hot favourites to make up for last season’s final defeat by adding the Currie Cup to the Super 14 title they claimed after a 61-17 demolition of the Chiefs at the Pretoria ground a few months ago.

The Bulls are an accomplished Super 14 team, with the Cheetahs only recent recruits, and a capacity crowd of 37,383 watched their first official Super 14 match against the Bulls on February 10th, 2006.

It provided a new arena to an old contest. However, the same rules applied. That is, when any rules applied at all.

While the Bulls will be overwhelming favourites, the Cheetahs are well used to upsetting the formbook.

In the upset of the season, the Cheetahs beat the reigning champions Natal Sharks 23-21 in the semi-final in Durban.

It was a game in which the Cheetahs pushed the Sharks’ front row around for much of the game. That’s a Sharks frontrow that reads John Smit, Bismarck du Plessis and Tendai “The Beast” Mtawarira.

Similarly, much of the focus this Saturday will centre on a clash of the low numbers on both sides. While the Bulls, formerly Northern Transvaal, and the Cheetahs, originally the Orange Free State, have been waging war on the rugby pitch for many decades, the rivalry has reached a new level in the last few years, with one or both involved in each Currie Cup final since 2002, when the Bulls won the first of a three-in-a-row – the last coming via a 42-33 final-day triumph over the Cheetahs in Pretoria in a 10-try encounter that had so many stoppages it ran to 100 minutes.

The Bulls have won the Currie Cup outright on 17 occasions, and shared it four times, the latest in 2006, a year after the Cheetahs stopped the Bulls’ four-in-a-row attempt and claimed their only final-day triumph over this foe. Saturday will be the ninth Currie Cup final meeting of the teams.

The 2006 final was a typically ferocious defensive encounter – the third Bulls versus Cheetahs decider in succession – and when the sparring was over, there was still no winner, or there were two, depending on your view.

Either way, it is a bizarre system, in which two teams pound each other for 100 minutes – though this time one that included extra-time – and then, still locked together, share the spoils.

The previous season, the Bloemfontein-based side came from 25-15 down with nine minutes left to run in two tries in the dying minutes to shock the Bulls by claiming their first title since 1976.

Not for the first time, a meeting of the Cheetahs and Bulls was liberally sprinkled with off-the-ball action, and it was when Habana became the third man yellow-carded that the underdogs finally found the opening and seized their chance against the team that had dominated rugby in South Africa for the previous three seasons.

After the shared final the following year, the Cheetahs claimed their own (sort of) three-in-a-row by prevailing again in the 2007 decider, this time against the Golden Lions in Bloemfontein.

To reach the decider, the Cheetahs defeated the Bulls 11-6 in a game that was delayed for half an hour due to lightning, and featured some thunderous challenges during the tie in which the Bulls were looking for revenge for a 44-18 humiliation during the regular season, which was also played in Bloemfontein.

In the pendulum nature of these meetings, the Cheetahs won the three meetings between the rivals that season, with the Bulls claiming all three last season, the last another semi-final date – a 31-19 win in Pretoria.

This season, the two meetings to date have gone to the home side, nicely setting up another mouth-watering decider between two fiercely determined sides.

Blue Bulls v Free State Cheetahs

Saturday, Loftus Versfeld, Pretoria

Kick-off – 5pm (local time), 3pm (Irish time)

Live on Sky Sports Xtra