For the fourth straight season the cupboard is bare at Newlands after a 2005 rugby campaign best forgotten.

Correction, there is one piece of silverware in the trophy cabinet, to show for the season. Western Province did win the amateur trophy, but before their Currie Cup hopes evaporated in the 16-11 defeat to the Free State Cheetahs on Saturday, the Under-19 side were also beaten 43-34 by the Baby Bulls in the curtain-raiser.

In hindsight, many of the Newlands faithful will probably heave a sigh of relief that WP are not travelling to Loftus this weekend to face a rampaging Bulls side who have reigned supreme as the champion South African team for the past three seasons.

After their apocalyptic 75-14 annihilation at Loftus in the Super 12 - not to mention the 39-3 humiliation that followed in the Currie Cup - few Cape rugby enthusiasts would have had the stomach for a third calamity in the Jacaranda City in one season.

There was little to suggest that Province would have been able to turn the tide

And after being out-played, out-thought and out-muscled by the Cheetahs in Saturday's semifinal, there was little to suggest that Province would have been able to turn the tide at Loftus had they managed to prevail in the play-off.

The question that the brains trust at Newlands will have to carefully consider in the next few weeks before the Super 14 kicks off in February is how a 2005 season that started on such an upbeat note went so horribly pear-shaped.

After making the Super 12 semifinal in 2004, the Stormers kicked their 2005 campaign off with high hopes and lofty ambitions of even becoming the first South African side to win the Super 12 trophy.

One pundit even went as far to predict that a side overflowing with Springboks would top the log and host one of the play-off matches at Newlands for only the second time in nine years.

Instead the Stormers crashed and burned, finishing ninth on the log. In the process Newlands, once world-renowned as the bastion of a knowledgeable and sporting rugby audience, sunk to new lows as boorish sections of the crowd turned on their heroes.

Province recovered to beat both the Lions and Sharks

Coach Gert Smal and his players were booed off the field after the Stormers were given a master-class in clinical efficiency by the Crusaders, who put the Cape side to the sword with a 51-23 hiding that the Newlands faithful found hard to stomach.

The Stormers were little better in sinking to a 37-24 home defeat to the Blues side they had thrashed at Eden Park in 2004, and the rot had sunk in by the time the Chiefs arrived in Cape Town to defeat the Cape franchise 37-34.

Then came Loftus and the blackest day in Super 12 history for a Stormers side made to look comical by a Bulls team with the scent of blood in their nostrils.

A silver lining, however, had emerged in the shape of a white knight in the form of WP's new director of rugby, Nick Mallett. The former Springbok coach's record at Test level and in France, where he had won two championships with Stade Francais and earned the freedom of Paris from the city's mayor, a keen supporter of the club, held promise of a new dawn.

Mallett, seen as WP's saviour, wasted little time sweeping the old coaching regime of Gert Smal and Carel du Plessis out the door and ushering in the new coaching team of Kobus van der Merwe and Gary Gold.

It quickly became clear that any deadwood would not last long and WP kicked off their Currie Cup campaign with an air of optimism.

The first cracks, however, started to appear when Province were outplayed 29-22 by Boland in Wellington - the upset of the season.

Province recovered to beat both the Lions and Sharks home and away and their followers were encouraged to be patient while a new philosophy and style took root.

Then came Saturday's semifinal in which Province, fielding six current Springboks to the two of Free State, were expected to win.

It didn't take long for the realisation to dawn that the Cheetahs, under new coach Rassie Erasmus, were better organised and more clinical than a one-dimensional WP who desperately needed a plan B to crack a defence as tough as hardened concrete.

And while Newlands was crying out for something special on Saturday - such as Jean de Villiers, Earl Rose or Schalk Burger to smash the mould with a flash of creative inspiration - they waited in vain.

And so the curtain came down on a sorry season at Newlands with little evidence to suggest that Province had made any progress from 2004.

The performance of the Vodacom Cup side this year and the Under-21s suggests that the rot at Newlands is deeper than imagined.

WP, with all the talent, numbers and rugby resources of the Western Cape, are expected to produce. And even if they don't win trophies, the expectation is that WP will perform with a style of play that has traditionally been on a higher plane than their South African rivals.

It's little comfort, therefore, to hear the Newlands hierarchy talking about two or three-year plans and cycles.

Next year's Super 14 kicks off in just over three months' time and the competition is going to be the most fiercely contested in history. And in 2006 the bottom-placed South African team will be relegated to accommodate the SEC franchise from 2007.

Every other franchise in South Africa has selected their coaches and finalised their management team for the Super 14, so it is worrying that the Stormers have yet to do so and that none of the players appear to have been given pre-season training programmes either.

• This article was originally published on page 18 of Cape Argus on October 17, 2005