Bulls need to cut out silly errors ahead of ‘month from hell’

PRETORIA: It doesn’t matter how victory comes, the Bulls will take any win as long as it keeps them on the path to success.

Since returning to winning ways with an uninspiring victory over the Jaguares, the Bulls again pulled off an ugly 20-14 win against the Cheetahs at Loftus on Saturday.

As much as the Bulls stick to the script of their weekly mantra of having confidence and belief in themselves, their performances on the field speaks of a team still low on confidence and lacking belief that they can play a progressive brand of rugby.

Their horrid start to the season, where they managed to win only one out of six matches, would have seriously dented the egos and confidence of many of their players and that would have been further amplified after their shock defeat to the Sunwolves in Tokyo three weeks ago.

There can be no doubting the immense talent that lies within the youthful Bulls squad. But that has proven not to be enough for them to be competitive in this year’s Super Rugby campaign.

At the heart of many of the Bulls defeats has been the high error rate emanating from the lack of basic handling skills and the team’s struggles to accurately execute their game plan.

Bulls coach Nollis Marais admits that “silly errors” are costing his team dearly and almost did again on Saturday against a Cheetahs side that had beaten them earlier in the competition in Bloemfontein.

Marais’ need for a rapid elimination of their error-ridden game is the acid test that faces his side in the coming weeks as they clash against the Crusaders, Highlanders, Lions and Hurricanes, sides that are ruthless and put careless teams to the sword when the opportunity presents itself.

Marais has dubbed next month as “the month from hell” and it could very well prove to be the determining factor of whether the Bulls have an average or bad season.

“I think we didn’t play well in the first half and in the second half we played much better with ball in hand. Too many errors, same story every week, luckily the guys played much better in that second half and we managed to pull it off,” said Marais.

“In the first 30 minutes we had four line-outs, we won only one clean so we were on the back foot the whole time. We need to be much better and have a better plan there. It doesn’t help getting the ball there and then we lose it with silly errors. That is something we are going to need to look into before we play the Crusaders.”