The massive media build-up to this weekend’s Sevens tournament at Cape Town Stadium is symptomatic of more than just an uplift in the interest in the abbreviated code.
It also tells us just what a desperately miserable year it has been for South African rugby, with everyone desperate to find something to erase the memory of what transpired during the annus horribilis.
Bob Skinstad, in his role as one of the commentators in Dubai last week, summed it up - the Sevens success is an indication that not all the structures in South African rugby are falling apart or disorganised. Some delegates to the recent coaching indaba told me that what they got out of it was a new respect for what Rassie Erasmus achieved in his erstwhile role as Saru performance director.
Unfortunately, Erasmus wasn’t allowed to meddle in the Springbok affairs during the Heyneke Meyer era, and that played a big role in his departure in the middle of 2016.
He is a bigger loss to South African rugby than many people realise, and the moment he decided to move to Munster might rank as my low point of the year.
Yes, even lower than a 57-15 Bok defeat to the All Blacks in Durban and a loss to Italy in Florence, because his departure did have an influence on what followed. Erasmus was supposed to be the brains behind Allister Coetzee, as he was at the Stormers before that.
But there were many behind-the-scenes low points that contributed to the on-field demise, and with the World Series Sevens event once again coinciding with the weekend where I sign off this column for the year, it got me thinking back to where we were 12 months ago.
Normally I like to look back on the year in my last Saturday column and then forward to the next one on the Sunday, But in 2015 it wasn’t possible, as the weekend also coincided with the moment that Western Province announced their decision to overrule director of rugby Gert Smal’s recommendation that former All Black coach John Mitchell should take over at the Stormers.
Let’s not dredge it all up again, suffice to say, for anybody who might have missed this line during the year - I do think WP got it right in appointing Robbie Fleck.
The former Bok centre is a good coach. He impressed me on so many different levels during Super Rugby. But he would have benefited from having Mitchell along to guide him, perhaps in the capacity of technical director, as his coaching team as a whole was way too inexperienced.
The Stormers didn't make nearly the amount of progress towards reinventing themselves into a more dynamic attack-oriented game as they should have hoped. They did reach the Super Rugby playoffs, but only because they were in a weak pool and only played Australian opposition. When the Chiefs rode into town for the quarter-final, it wasn’t pretty for the Stormers.
What bugged me about the whole Mitchell debacle, apart from the fact that there is no point having a director of rugby if his opinions are going to be ignored and the petty internal politics that underpinned it, was the other factor - players in this country are too mollycoddled. And one of the big undermentioned problems with the Boks, not only this year but possibly in the last six, is that the culture may be too player-driven.
There was a point in the Peter de Villiers era as Bok coach when there was a seismic shift away from the more disciplined approach of Jake White, with experienced and decorated players like John Smit, Victor Matfield and Fourie du Preez effectively taking over the running of the team. It was something Meyer inherited. He wasn’t always happy with it but he was reluctant to rock the boat.
The player-driven culture spread to other unions, like WP, and the players’ familiarity with it had repercussions for White when he coached at the Sharks.
He wasn’t popular with the players for coming in and telling them that rugby was their profession and that they were owned by the Sharks. Throughout his year in Durban there was talk of unhappiness and a possible player revolt.
However, speak to any of those players - even the disaffected ones - and they will tell you that while they may not have liked White as a person, they respected him as a coach. Surely that should be the bottom line? Some of those same players are now playing for White in France and doing well under him.
One of the things I was looking forward to when Eddie Jones was heading to the Stormers was to see how the players would react to his discipline. Jones is a hard-nosed coach, very different from his England predecessor Stuart Lancaster, and it is part of his success there.
I’m not suggesting we should go back to the 1970s when Northern Transvaal used to win Currie Cups off the back of the Spartan and dictatorial methods of the late Brigadier Buurman van Zyl, or that we should overdo discipline, which was something Rudolf Straeuli got wrong.
Players should be treated as adults. But a subtle shift away from the player-driven culture may reintroduce the on-field hardness that was lacking across many levels of South African rugby in 2016.