THE ROAD IS LONG
URC: COACHES CAUTION NOT TO GET EXCITED JUST YET
→Bulls and Lions the happiest of the local franchises ahead of another two-week break.
The Bulls and Lions are happy teams as the United Rugby Championship (URC) breaks for another two weekends for the end of the Six Nations competition, before heading into a hectic end-of-season run in which they will play almost every weekend for two-and-a-half months.
The two Highveld sides will thus be the happier of the local franchises ahead of that run after picking up impressive wins over their rivals this past weekend.
The Bulls’ 40-22 win over the Stormers, that broke a seven game losing run against them, has left them sitting pretty in second on the URC log and well on course to secure home play-offs come the end of the campaign.
However coach Jake White stressed that his side should not get ahead of themselves, explaining that they still had plenty of work to do.
“I must reinforce that we haven’t won anything (yet). We’ve won a game, it’s a pool game and we happened to stay ahead of them,” said White after the momentous result.
“But we have won nothing. We are not going to get ahead of ourselves. You are not going to see things on social media where we start posting things about being the best team that’s ever played rugby. Part of being a coach is to get young boys to understand that.”
For the ninth-placed Stormers, they now find themselves in a strange position after two dominant URC campaigns, outside the top-eight and under a bit of pressure, although they should still make the competition play-offs, but may miss out on hosting any games.
On the Lions front they bounced back from a four game losing run in all competitions with their 40-10 win over the Sharks at Ellis Park, which has brought them right back into the top-eight fight.
It has been a major goal of the Johannesburg side to make the competition play-offs, with them having finished outside of the top- eight the past two campaigns, and they now sit 11th on the log, but just three points off Benetton, who are eighth.
“We really feel that throughout the season we have been thereabouts (sic). It has just been small moments and little disciplines that prevented us from getting a few more wins,” explained coach Ivan van Rooyen.
“Getting this result in what was a must-win game for us was obviously pleasant. I think once we get going on tour (in three weeks) we play nine or 10 games in a row, which actually helps us because we can get into our rhythm.
“The last six weeks was stopstart. So getting this result after the last four weeks of training and off days, is nice to see.”*