Bring back the mud: Super Rugby's unofficial 1970s throwback round

The rare sight of players head-to-toe in mud warmed the cockles of Jamie Wall’s heart in a weekend full of oddly old-fashioned rugby.

Just a week after Super Rugby laid on a couple of ridiculous games and broke the record for most points in a single round, we got the almost the complete opposite this weekend.

Low scores and defence dominated all the key games, which for some would have been a welcome throwback to the good old days. Except those old days were long before Super Rugby, which has never been like this, ever.

The biggest callback to the olden days came in Pretoria, where the Highlanders and Bulls actually managed to get their jerseys muddy.

The Loftus Versfeld mudbath was aided by some heavy Pretoria rain and the fact that the Highlanders’ jerseys were mostly white. The glorious sight of soil staining fabric showed every club-playing hack that the boys who get paid the big bucks can still end up looking like they’d played on a lower grade club field anywhere in the world.

Mud has always been associated with rugby, perhaps more so than any other sport (aside from mud-wrestling). The sight of a grizzled set of forward packs indistinguishable from one another due to being brown from head to toe is as iconic an image as it gets.

It didn’t quite get to the sort of World War I-like levels that you can find in late winter New Zealand after a few hundred scrums have been packed down on one pitch, but by full time the Highlanders’ kit was ruined. The Bulls traditional blue uniforms fared slightly better, but they will still need a trip to the drycleaners.

That’s not where the old-school feel of the game finished, either. Two straight red cards were dished out, just like back when there was no leeway if a ref decided you’d done something bad enough to warrant not being on the field anymore.

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Admittedly, Waisake Naholo and RG Snyman’s actions wouldn’t have even raised an eyebrow – let alone a finger pointing to the dressing room – back in the amatuer era. However, the extra space, coupled with the slippery mud that had enveloped a resurgent Malakai Fekitoa, played a big part in the centre’s excellent and crucial try late in the game.

All they needed were long sleeves and the whole thing would’ve looked right at home in the 1970s. In fact, so would’ve the Crusaders grinding win over the Hurricanes, the Lions’ crucial victory over the Brumbies and the Force’s upset over the Jaguares.

But, as always, there’s one team in Super Rugby that loves keeping it real by steadfastly refusing to tackle. This week was no exception, so let’s all stand and applaud the Cheetahs for giving up their customary big swag of points to a Blues side that desperately needed them.

The Auckland-based side is off to South Africa this week, where they’ll be the first team ever to be happy they haven’t drawn to play the Kings. Someone should’ve told those guys they were going to get kicked out of the competition ages ago if this is the way they’re going to play in response.