Mitchell draws a line under 2018 season

Ken Borland

“You can’t expose youngsters to Super Rugby,” seems to be Bulls coach John Mitchell’s rallying cry as he starts his planning for the 2019 campaign after their 2018 tournament ended with a thoroughly mediocre 12th-place finish at the weekend.

When asked after the 38-12 defeat to the Lions how he would approach next year’s competition, Mitchell (right) said: “You can tell everyone we’re recruiting.” Which is evidence of the whole- sale change he wants to bring to the franchise.

“We need to change our model from quantity to quality, we need to create two teams that are able to cope with the demands of Super Rugby. You can’t expose youngsters to Super Rugby because they cannot handle it, and you can’t have a smearing of Test players and hope that they last the whole tournament.

“We do have very good processes and systems, but we have to change our recruitment policy, we have to change our mindset in order to manage workloads and injuries. You can’t rotate players unless you have experienced depth, and it’s clear what areas we need depth in,” Mitchell said.

The Bulls can at least look back with some satisfaction on the first half of the competition, when they looked like genuine contenders.

“We were in contention until the second round (June break), but you can’t control injuries and we also had props out for 10 weeks due to suspensions. It was a combination of critical injuries and lack of depth that did us in, and by the end of the season we were playing with a patched up side and a lot of youth,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell’s plans would see him take firmer control of the franchise’s high performance programme and it is believed he is intent on luring several Springboks to Loftus Versfeld. He has also stated his intention to bolster his support staff, and the Bulls can certainly do with a specialist defence coach.

One player who will not be part of the future plans is centre Dries Swanepoel, who has joined the Free State Cheetahs for the Currie Cup after being a peripheral figure under Mitchell.