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The penultimate round of the Currie Cup regular season is upon us and this weekend we will have another 3 amazing matches to look forward to. The two top teams will travel west to face the Central provincial teams. In Kimberley the Golden Lions will try to stay ahead of the Sharks, who travel to Bloem. The remaining match will be played in Pretoria, where Western Province will try to cement their spot for the play-offs while the Blue Bulls have to win to keep a small chance of making those same play-offs.
With this encounter we will start the weekend. Round 9 kicks off at Loftus Versfeld, the stadium where the Springboks demolished the Wallabies last weekend. The Blue Bulls will see it as their final chance to make the play-offs which they missed last season. Both teams lost last weekend and will try to bounce back. If the Bulls win, they will have to hope both Natal Sharks and Golden Lions beat their opponents to climb to the 4th spot on the log. Western Province cannot climb on the log, unless they win with a bonuspoint and the Sharks team loses without clinching a bonuspoint. The match between the two earlier this season in Newlands, ended in a 42-6 win for the Cape Town province.
In Kimberley, the log-leaders Golden Lions will try to stay ahead of the Sharks when they play the unpredictable Griquas. The Griquas team has lost two in a row after winning 3 straight. Can the Griquas get back to winning and hop back in contention for the play-offs? They have dropped out of the top-4 and they are desperate not to finish last. The Golden Lions are again looking to top the log at the end of the regular season and if they do, it will be a slap in the face of SARU, who dismantled their Super Rugby franchise to accommodate the Southern Kings. Can the Golden Lions repeat their feat? Things will be difficult since they are without strongholders Taute, Jantjies, Cilliers and Mapoe. Griquas don't miss anybody due to Bok duty but nobody can deny Marnus Schoeman being close to a call-up. He is the, according to insiders, the sole reason the Griquas team is playing so well. When the teams met earlier this season, the Griquas won at Ellis Park, scoring 5 tries in a 32-42 win over the defending champions.
The final match will be played after the Springbok test against New Zealand and will see the Natal Sharks visiting the Free State Cheetahs. Matches between these two are always a guarantee for a spectacular encounter. By beating the franchise-partners Griquas, the Free State team climbed from 6th to 4th and they have play-off contention in their own hands. With Heinrich Brussow again leaving the field early with an injury, it looks like he will be a last-minute decision whether he plays or not. The Natal Sharks will possibly be without Pieter Dixon who was red-carded for kicking CJ Stander in the face. The citing commissioner will determine whether that was intentional and if a ban is justified. If so, the Durban team will have to rely on youngsters Kyle Cooper and Monde Hadebe for the hooking position. Louis Ludik and Keegan Daniel were not among the injury-replacements for the Springboks and they will have their work cut out for them. The most interesting battle will be the scrum-halves. Cobus Reinach and Sarel Pretorius are both quick, impulsive scrummies who play more based on intuition rather than a certain game-plan. Especially Reinach has shown his class in the last couple of matches. When the two teams met in Durban 5 weeks ago, the Cheetahs were leading 6-21 at half-time but imploded in the second half and lost 34-32 when Meyer Bosman scored the winning try in the 76th minute.
The vBookie event for this round will be Blue Bulls - Western Province
Round 9 Fixtures
Loftus Versfeld, Pretoria (05/10/2012, 19:10 GMT)
Hoffe Park, Kimberley (06/10/2012, 14:00 GMT)
Free State Stadium, Bloemfontein (06/10/2012, 19:15 GMT)