In the aftermath of this weekend’s Super 14 final, The Times argues that the Bulls will continue to succeed, because they treat rugby like the commercialised, US- or European-style professional sport that it has become:

With an experienced senior squad and a production belt of talent, which is both nurtured and recruited, there’s no reason to believe that they can’t maintain their status as the best club side in the world — Leinster, Munster and top French clubs included. Players arrive for training at Loftus early in the morning and leave late in the afternoon. They are professionals going to do a day’s work. At Loftus they have everything they need — a gym, a medical centre, swimming pool, restaurant, pleasant surroundings, state-of-the art video and technical assistance and some of the best back-room staff in the world.

Other South African teams have been less successful in making this transition:

The contrast with a team such as the Lions, just 60km away at Ellis Park, is startling. In rugby terms they’re thousands of kilometres apart. The Lions train in Randburg some days, at the University of Johannesburg on others and also at the Johannesburg stadium. Players spend much time trekking from one practice centre to another. The Stormers have loyal fans and some slick marketing, but their media relations are abysmal, and for years their contracting and recruiting policy has been a shambles.

I hope the optimistic assessment of the Bulls’ future prospects is correct. I’ve never been an avid rugby-watcher in the past, mostly limiting myself the World Cup every four years. This year, however, I’ve started watching club-level rugby, and I’ve enjoyed it so much that I wish I’d taken an interest sooner. As a team sport, rugby has neither the elegant, uninterrupted flow of football nor the intricate tactics of gridiron, but it combines tactical set-pieces with free-wheeling gameplay in way that arguably makes it superior to both. And even though much of the culture of support that surrounds the Bulls is, to be frank, pretty alien to me, I can’t help but feel a certain sense of giddy delight at the success of the home-town team.