Shimlas: How they shaped up in 2009
There is no doubt that the 78-22 pasting they dished out to FNB TUT represented an excellent finish to FNB Shimlas' campaign in the 2009 FNB Varsity Cup presented by Steinhoff International.
Unfortunately, it also highlighted a slightly wayward and inconsistent campaign.
Continuing the tradition of Bloemfontein being South African rugby's 'running capital', no team scored more tries than the Shimlas' 30 during the round-robin campaign and, while they will probably be overtaken by some of the teams featuring in the semifinals, their points tally of 202 is only one less than that of Varsity Cup frontrunners, FNB Maties.
Director of Shimla-rugby, Dougie Heymans, a former prop who made 154 appearances for Free State, knows all about the ups and downs that have befallen the proud union over the years. Still, he felt his Shimlas had finished the season strongly.
"I think morale in our camp is very high," was the big guy's opinion while in conversation with varsitycup.co.za. "Once we started to play well as a team, I thought our fortunes started to turn as well."
Heymans cited the Shimlas' biggest loss of the tournament - a 44-8 loss that belied a good performance in the first half - against FNB UJ as the turning point in their campaign.
Sceptics will argue that two wins from the remaining three matches (one against TUT) hardly represented a truly 360-degree turnaround, but on closer inspection, there is merit to his argument.
"After that walloping against UJ I think the guys realised that they needed to shape up.
"We then beat Tukkies 39-22 in our best performance of the season, while the Ikey management admitted that they were lucky to escape with a (23-20) win a week later," Heymans explained.
Monday's huge victory over TUT was merely the cherry on top to a sequence of games that the Shimla boss called "an upward curve". What he felt was particularly special was the team spirit shown by the players.
"One should take into account that we didn't make wholesale changes to the squad. We kept the core of our side and they merely realised that they have the talent and just needed to gel together as a team. The results showed that," he added.
Overall, Heymans thought the season was a reasonable success and suggested one alteration to the tournament.
"I was reasonably pleased with the whole campaign and its organisation. We feel, however, that having ended on such a high note that if there was a double round-robin section to the tournament (on a home-and-away basis), we would finish much stronger than we did," he concluded.
Indeed, an interesting and perhaps fitting thought to ponder on from what was a very interesting campaign by the Men from Bloemfontein.
By Heinz Schenk