Bulls ‘must be clinical’
STRAUSS: YOU SEE THE FRUSTRATION WHEN WE DON’T MAKE THE LAST PASS
Captain convinced his side have the right game plan.
“You can see the frustration,” Bulls captain Adriaan Strauss said this week as he spoke about the players but reflected the mood of everyone as they head into their daunting Super Rugby clash against the unbeaten Chiefs in Hamilton today having won just one of their four matches this season.
Strauss said the players are well aware that they haven’t really produced any decent rugby out on the field so far this campaign and said they need to eliminate their errors that stop them from executing what they remain confident is a good game plan.
“You can see the frustration when the players don’t make the last pass or don’t hold on to the ball. Rugby is about creating pressure and keeping that pressure on the opposition, but we’ve been making mistake after mistake to release that pressure – if it’s not a handling error then it’s someone running in the same channel as a team-mate, or the cleaner’s not there or we miss the lineout throw.
“But we believe things will fall into place. We just need to hang on to the ball for more than one or two phases and get our attacking shape right first before we worry about how we’re going to attack.
“Defending for 80 minutes is also difficult and we know the Chiefs are a good attacking side and they have good in-contact skills. You can maybe hold out for 65 minutes, but you can’t do it for the whole game.
“We want to get the Chiefs on the deck as soon as possible and not give them the opportunity to offload. If you take your foot off the pedal in defence then everything starts going. The problem is we need to play more constructive, clinical rugby. We want an attacking mindset but we’re not giving ourselves the opportunity, if we cut out the mistakes, that will allow us to play better rugby,” Strauss said.
Backing up the point that the Bulls are perhaps not as hapless as they have seemed thus far is that they were able to enjoy more than 60% of the possession and territory against the Blues last weekend, but were hammered 38-14, and they have to be more clinical against the Chiefs if they want to avoid complete humiliation.
“We must be a lot more accurate, every time we’re in the opposition’s area we lose the ball or don’t convert into points. We must be better against a Chiefs side that have all their All Blacks back. With Dominic Bird and Brodie Retallick they have a good pack and they are a good attacking team. They’ve won four out of four and are a top New Zealand side.
“They can punish you from everywhere if you give them the ball, so we have to limit our mistakes,” Bulls coach Nollis Marais said.