Mitchell: Bulls still have a long way to go
WHILE Sharks coach Robert du Preez was spitting fire calling his team’s performance, or rather lack thereof, “embarrassing”, Bulls coach John Mitchell and his team aren’t getting carried away with their recent successive victories over the Stormers and Sharks.
As much as the win against the Stormers two weeks ago would have done the men in blue’s confidence a world of good, it was their 40-10 win against the Sharks, their sixth match unbeaten against the Durban side, that will inspire and ignite hope that the three-time champions can make the playoffs.
The win for the Bulls was not only monumental in catapulting them to second spot in the South African conference, but still 11 points adrift of the table-topping Lions, it was also the ruthlessness in their play that would have sent out a warning to other teams still to play them.
But Mitchell is wary of getting ahead of himself and is looking at getting some consistency in games to go along with his winning blueprint, which has brought back plenty of optimism among the long-suffering Loftus faithful and players as well.
“We’ll just take one week at a time, we still have a long way to go. But at least we are starting to see a blueprint where there is confidence and understanding. We are starting to win the minds and hearts of our fans, which is important because they’ve gone through a lot of sacrifice and hard times. Ultimately it is up to us to make sure that we serve something bigger than ourselves, if we can continue to fight and play with that kind of spirit then we will win and make our fans proud,” said Mitchell.
Winning aside, it is the manner in which the Bulls are now approaching games that speaks volumes of the confidence within the side and as much as they want to play with more ball in hand, they are understanding that possession is nothing without set-piece dominance and a steely defence.
Even after conceding the first points of the match, the Bulls diligently went about their graft, first by winning the battle among the forwards then trusting their rock-solid defence to thwart any attacks by the Sharks before unleashing their elusive backs to finish the job off.
“When teams come back from overseas it’s a hard week and we experienced it before with the Stormers. We weren’t too flash, we gutsed it out and dug in. Sometimes you try and put anxiety into the home team as quick as you can and I think we did that well. The conditions played a part as well so we always thought that we might have to go to our plan B with the rain but I was particularly pleased with the way the drivers of the game Polly (Handre Pollard), Ivan (van Zyl) and Warrick (Gelant) how they actually managed the conditions very well. We got a lesson in Christchurch in heavy rain by playing too much rugby in the middle of the field. We looked to exploit space on the edge, we felt there was opportunities in their back field,” Mitchell said.
Much of the damage would have been done in the battle between both packs and the icing on the cake was left to Springbok fullback Gelant to showcase his skills with a hat-trick of tries that sealed victory.
Saturday’s try fest was Gelant’s second hat-trick at King’s Park after having done the same during the Currie Cup last year.
Mitchell is pleased that his star back has returned to form having struggled to set the scene alight so far this year.
“Warrick had a great week of preparation and he is in a great space. He was brilliant,” added Mitchell.