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The Citizen
12-05-2025
- Sport
- The Citizen
Look who's back in the Currie Cup Premier Division — Boland
The top eight teams have now been confirmed for this year's main Currie Cup competition. Boland will play in the Premier Division of the Currie Cup this season. Picture: Grant Pitcher/Gallo Images The Boland Kavaliers are back in top-flight Currie Cup rugby! The men from the Western Cape finished fourth on the SA Cup points table at the weekend to take their place in this season's Premier Division of the Currie Cup. The top four teams qualify, and they are log leaders the Pumas, second-placed Griquas, the third-placed Cheetahs and Boland. They'll join the four United Rugby Championship franchises – the Bulls, Lions, Sharks and Stormers (Western Province) – in the eight-team Premier Division later this year. Semi-finals In this weekend's SA Cup semi-finals, the Pumas will host Boland and the Griquas will host the Cheetahs. Jimmy Stonehouse's Pumas finished top of the log with a perfect 45 points after their nine matches, Griquas accumulated 42 points from eight wins from their nine games, the Cheetahs finished with 34 points from six wins, while Boland had five wins and 32 points. Valke (30), Griffons (26), Eastern Province (21), Leopards (10), SWD Eagles (eight) and Border Bulldogs (three) finished in positions five down to 10. The SA Cup semi-finals will be staged this coming weekend, with the final the following week, on 24 May. The Premier Division of the Currie Cup will kick off on Friday 26 July, with the final on Saturday 20 September. The last time Boland featured in the top-flight of South Africa's Currie Cup was in 2016.
The Citizen
24-04-2025
- Sport
- The Citizen
OPINION: Athletics SA needs to be reasonable with its selection criteria
Many athletes ignored ASA's requirement to compete at two Grand Prix meetings on the domestic circuit this year, in order to be selected for national teams. Middle-distance runners in action at the Cape Milers Club meeting in Cape Town, one of three ASA Grand Prix events held this year. Picture: Grant Pitcher/Gallo Images Criteria is obviously important when selecting a team in any sport, but that criteria also needs to be reasonable. In track and field, it's standard for the national federation to require athletes to compete at the SA Championships, which makes sense. Athletics South Africa (ASA) do offer exemptions for individuals who are ill, injured or not based in South Africa, so it's not an unreasonable request. In some ways this season, ASA has offered athletes more leeway than usual. In other ways, however, the federation has been too pushy. Though they are not injured or ill, and they're all based in South Africa, four of the country's best athletes – sprinters Akani Simbine and Lythe Pillay, hurdler Marione Fourie and javelin thrower Jo-Ane du Plessis – have seemingly been given exemptions from competing at the SA Championships in Potchefstroom this week, in order to participate at the opening leg of the Diamond League series in China. And this is a good move. Any professional athletes who are invited to Diamond League meetings should be allowed to go, in order to represent South Africa in a series that is considered the pinnacle of the sport outside major global championships, and to make some decent money in the process. Grand Prix meetings However, the ASA criteria this year also requires athletes to compete at two local Grand Prix meetings. This is unreasonable. South African athletes are not contracted to ASA, and it's unfair to force them to compete at domestic meetings outside the SA Championships, especially when they can't earn much in terms of prize money. In response, most of the country's top athletes ignored that clause, opting not to abide by it, which has left ASA in a sticky situation. If the federation enforces the rule, it will have to select a very small, under-strength team for the World Championships in Tokyo later this year. So by ignoring an unreasonable demand, the athletes have forced the federation into a corner Refusing not to be bullied, the athletes made the right decision, and ASA must now scratch that clause in its criteria, which shouldn't have been included in the first place.
