Advertisement

CURRIE CUP FINAL PREVIEW: Griquas upset would breathe life into fabled trophy

football19 September 2025 07:40
By:Gavin Rich
Share
article image
Lions © Getty Images

There will no doubt be a lot of fist pumping, as there has been in recent weeks, if as expected the ADT Lions win Saturday’s Carling Currie Cup final against Suzuki Griquas in Johannesburg but the elation is unlikely to be shared by anyone else beyond the team’s most ardent fans.

Griquas will go in as heavy underdogs but also as the team most neutrals will be supporting. There may be several reasons for that, one of them obviously being that everyone loves an underdog, but also because if Griquas get their hands on the golden trophy for the first time since 1970 it will provide a narrative that keeps with the storied history of the competition.

If the Lions win, there won’t be. The Lions administrators or coaches might get excited about it, and of course there will doubtless be some media people who will inject hubris into the whole occasion by referring to “a glory moment”, or some such similar expression. But outside of those connected to the Lions, the overriding question will surely be “So what?”

It is a Vodacom United Rugby Championship team that is using the competition as a springboard to the inter-continental competition against a Currie Cup team. In the past two weeks, when the other unions aligned to URC franchises have reintroduced players, we have seen what a chasm there is between the two.

THROWBACK TO 1984 FINAL

There was only one occasion in living memory from the old era, when every Currie Cup final was seen as something akin to a test match, that there was such a distortion - when one team came from a completely different level of competition from the other.

It was Newlands in 1984. Natal, yet to become the Currie Cup winning union they were to become six years later, were in the B Section back then, but won through to the Cape Town decider because they won a semifinal in Durban.

In those days the B Section winners got as one of their prizes, along with a place in a promotion-relegation game, a chance to play the A Section runners up. Until that year, although Griquas did push Western Province all the way in the Kimberley semi in 1979, no B Section team had ever won. But Wynand Claassen’s team raised their game and won their Kings Park semi 26-15.

That win against a Free State (Cheetahs) side that had done so well in the A Section was great for the Durban rugby public, and soothed some of the disappointment over what had happened the week before - a comprehensive defeat at the hands of the A Section wooden-spoonists, the Northern Free State ‘Purple People Eaters’ in the promotion-relegation game in Welkom the previous week.

But few outside of what is now known as KZN gave them much chance in the final, which became less of an event when Free State were knocked out. Although Claassen’s team, with the late Gawie Visagie playing a blinder at flyhalf, did make a game of it in the first half, there was something inevitable about WP’s eventual win.

For it was the A Section winners against the B Section winners. Saturday at Emirates Airlines Park it is a URC team against a Currie Cup team. Same difference.

 

 

WINNING WILL MEAN EVERYTHING TO GRIQUAS

Why it would be good for the competition and the status of the trophy for Griquas to win is because it will mean everything to the players from the smaller union, and big for Kimberley. It will add to the legend of 1970, which was when Griquas won their third title in a final against Northern Transvaal (Bulls) that old timers still talk about with great reverence.

For Griquas a hold of the Currie Cup trophy will be a massive boost for rugby in the Northern Cape, and like was the case in the area around Nelspruit following the Airlink Pumas win in 2022, the trophy will be put on show at events around the promotion of the sport for months afterwards. In a nutshell, it will be a meaningful event.

Unless there’s a very distorted view of the realities of the South African rugby eco-system at the Johannesburg union, that shouldn’t be the case for the Lions beyond next week when they start their challenge in the URC.

 

 

If the Lions coaches think there’s something big to be gained from winning the Currie Cup, maybe they should ask Sharks coach John Plumtree if he gave its presence in the Kings Park trophy cabinet any thought when the heat was on during the last URC season. He didn’t. Which was why the Sharks didn’t go for it this time around.

A Lions win on Saturday, and it will take a miracle for that not to be the case, will quickly be forgotten, and it will only add to the fuel of the growing lobby who support the contention first made by former Springbok flanker Gert Smal, a past Currie Cup winner as both player and coach, that the trophy should be put in a museum.

LIONS LOSING SKIPPER WON’T CHANGE FAVOURITE STATUS

Both teams will be named later on Friday but what we know right now is that the Lions lost their captain PJ Botha this week to a leg injury that will keep him out until December.

That shouldn’t make much difference to their chances of winning against a team that has played eye-catching rugby and has, along with the Lions’ semifinal victims last week, the Boland Kavaliers, been a standout at Currie Cup level this year.

The problem for Griquas and their fans is that this is no longer that level, it is a step up, and they were well beaten by the same opponents and at the same venue in the last league game two weeks ago. It should be a similar result, but many South Africans not aligned to the Lions will hope I am wrong as a Griquas win will breathe some much needed air into the old trophy.

Carling Currie Cup final 2025

ADT Fidelity Lions v Suzuki Griquas

Teams to be announced.


Venue: Emirates Airlines Park

Kick-off: 3pm

Prediction: Lions to win by 20

Advertisement