Ah, here we go then: 14 long weeks of tough, top-shelf provincial rugby have passed us by in a flash as the 2011 edition of the Kerrie Beker enters its final stages with this weekend’s semi-finals and next weekend’s final now upon us.

8 teams have slugged it out to get us to this: the Lions against Western Province and the Sharks against the Cheetahs for the right to contest the Currie Cup final next weekend.

What a season it’s been too, with a high quality of rugby played virtually week in and week out. In a lot of ways at least 7 of the premiership teams (minus whipping boys the Leppids, of course) have contributed towards a season of first class rugby that has lent itself to a good measure of each province’s strength and depth. No team was ever afforded the ability to coast through a game, and even contests between the top of the log teams and so-called minnows didn’t always go the way of the favourites: 7^th placed Pumas were desperately unlucky not to have a few more results end in their favour, and 6^th placed Griquas were always a very serious challenge – just ask the Sharks about their last visit to Kimberley and they’ll tell you all about it!

It’s fair to say that the best 4 teams throughout the year have deservedly progressed to the play-offs, and there can be few complaints from anybody who didn’t qualify for this weekend’s semis. Even our famously biased friends up North in Pretoria can only look at the Bulls’ performance early on in the season and recognize that they just didn’t perform well enough at the beginning of the competition to justify a play-off spot.

On current form, both home teams – the Lions and the Sharks – should be favourites to win their respective games against WP and the Cheetahs, but as anybody who has kept an eye on France in the World Cup will tell you, in a play-off game anybody can beat anybody on any given day and find themselves in a final.

SHARKS vs CHEETAHS (Mr. Price Kings Park, Durban. Saturday, 2.30pm)

About a month ago I installed the Cheetahs as my favourites to win the Currie Cup this year, but all that changed when they failed by 1 log point to secure a home semi-final against the Sharks when the latter produced enough on the scoreboard last week to host the semi in Durban rather than have to travel to Bloemfontein, where the odds would most certainly have been different on a Sharks win.

Added to the fact that this game is going to be contested in the Shark Tank is the bolstering of the Sharks’ ranks with a host of Springboks returning from the RWC, including most notably a Bismark du Plessis eager to put together 80 minutes of rugby without the nuisance of being substituted by or acting as a substitute for John Smit. The King is dead, long live the King, as they say in the classics…

It’s going to take a monumental effort from the Cheetahs to win away from home on Saturday, and although I have reservations about the solidity of the Sharks midfield versus the collection of attacking options available to the Cheetahs, I believe that the battle up front will really decide the outcome of this game, and I reckon the Sharks have the beef there to match anybody in the country, including the Cheetahs.

Either way, this game (both games in fact) is going to be a snorter…

Sharks by 8.

LIONS vs WESTERN PROVINCE (Coca-Cola Park, Joburg. Saturday, 5pm)

This is the game I’m really looking forward to this weekend, what with the Lions who have looked every bit Currie Cup champions-to-be ever since the first few weeks of this competition almost 4 months ago, against a young Western Province team who have surprised many by actually making it this far with a team of youngsters having been seriously depleted by injuries and Springbok selections.

I’m going to stick my neck out a bit with this pick – although the Lions are a settled outfit who haven’t been disrupted by too many injuries and Springbok selections, I think that WP are getting back national players in key positions that have been a bit of a headache for coach Allister Coetzee in this Currie Cup campaign, most notably at loose forward and centre. The return of Schalk Burger, Jacque Fourie, Jean de Villiers and Gio Aplon make a huge difference, not to mention struggling Bryan Habana and serial benchman Juan de Jongh.

It might be a bit much to expect free-spirited running rugby in play-off conditions, but I do expect this game to produce a greater number of tries than the Sharks-Cheetahs encounter, and I reckon WP might pull a surprise out the bag to beat the more fancied Lions.

WP by 5.