SA rugby giants happy with Harare adventure

IT can only be described as underwhelming and exceptionally low key, but it was interesting that the DHL Stormers were the only side to pronounce themselves satisfied with the weekend’s jaunt to Harare, Zimbabwe, for their pre-season warm-up match there.

The other three sides did their best to maintain radio — and every other communication tool — as they went through their first game of the season without any fanfare at all in the neighbouring country.

For the record the Vodacom Bulls defeated the Emirates Lions 37-18 and the Stormers downed the Toyota Cheetahs 43-6 in the two games in Harare but it was difficult to read much into both results as all four teams have been a long way from showing their hand.

The Lions, for instance, kept their top 30 players — essentially their entire Super Rugby squad — in South Africa and played a young and inexperienced team against a Bulls side that, apart from a few players returning from injury, was largely made up of their fringe and back-up players.

The Lions are set to start using their key players again when they play a composite club side this weekend at Wits, and ditto with the Bulls, who will give their first-choice squad a run against the Chiefs in Brisbane next weekend.

Perhaps the only interesting bit of news that surfaced — and via a late Saturday night press release — was that the Bulls had appointed Handre Pollard as captain and Hanro Liebenberg as vice-captain for the first few games of their Vodacom Super Rugby campaign until former Springbok captain Adriaan Strauss returns from injury.

Pollard was the natural choice to lead the team given his seniority and impact on their play, and there won’t be too many people who miss the thought that this could be a precursor to a possible role at the Springboks later this year should he regain his form that gave him the number 10 jersey after all.

The Bulls used their powerhouse Renaldo Bothma to get over the line, and flankers Nick de Jager and forgotten man Shaun Adendorff scored as well, with the latter signalling he could be set for a big season after returning to the Bulls this year.

Jamba Ulengo and new signing Johnny Kotze both got good runs as the Bulls posted a comfortable victory and then promptly headed off to Victoria Falls for a team-building exercise, returning only on Tuesday to South Africa.

There they were joined by the Cheetahs and Stormers — albeit in a different camp, as the Bloemfontein team worked hard on their own form with coach Franco Smith rejecting talk of reading anything into the result.

Smith pronounced himself satisfied despite the loss, saying the purpose for the pre-season game was served.

“We have to see it on perspective, the Stormers played their top side, they used 31 players in the game and we used a smaller squad. If you look at the squad we took, there were four guys who were involved in the Currie Cup final,” Smith told supersport.com.

“The whole idea was to give certain guys a run. A guy like Danie Mienie, for instance, last had a run against Griquas last year. Luan de Bruin was injured for six months. Boom was injured for most of the year and so you can go through the whole group.

“The Stormers’ objectives were different to us and in the game we gave away six turnover tries.

“I hope people look at the scoreline, because the expectation — that monkey is off our back after the wins from last year.”

The Stormers admitted they were happy with their performance but said there was a lot of hard work ahead.

“It is a good start for us, all the goals we set ourselves for this weekend were achieved,” coach Robbie Fleck said in a statement.

“We saw a few glimpses of the hard work we did in the pre-season, but we are certainly not there yet and we have still got a long way to go.

“We scored some decent tries from turnover ball and it is always nice when you see some results from what you have been working on.

“As management there were a few things that excited us, but there are definitely aspects that we still need to work on.

“There are still four weeks until our opening game against the Vodacom Bulls and there is still a lot of work to do,” he said.

Fleck added that his team has built on the foundations they laid with a change in approach last year, but there is still a lot for them to work on.

“It was really encouraging to see that what we started working on last year came through strongly as well. It was always going to take time for that change in approach to take hold so it is great that we are seeing the fruits of that now.

“It is now back to the drawing board, we will review the game and look at what needs to be worked on and see where we are at.

“It is now an opportunity for us to give some feedback to the players and knuckle down and get back to work.

“It is certainly pleasing from the point of view that the stuff we have been working on has come through,” he said. With everyone happy and enjoying Zimbabwean hospitality, it wasn’t surprising that the results mean little. With just less than a month to the start of the competition though, that will change as the first round edges closer and closer.

The Vodacom Bulls announced that flyhalf Handré Pollard will be captaining the Vodacom Super Rugby franchise going into the season, while regular captain Adriaan Strauss is still recovering from surgery and expectedto miss the first few games of the competition. — SuperSport.