How do you rest if you keep on losing?
THEBulls could find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place with their team selection for the remainder of their Australasian tour.
Bulls coach Frans Ludeke will be hard pressed to select his best side for the remainder of their three games on tour but could be armwrestled into succumbing to a standing agreement with the South African Rugby Union to rest some of their Springboks.
While Ludeke had honoured the resting of key Springboks like Victor Matfield, Jan Serfontein and Handre Pollard prior to going on tour, there will be pressure on him to afford the same resting period to the likes of Trevor Nyakane and Adriaan Strauss.
Strauss has played in all but one of the Bulls matches so far this season and is now due for his mandatory rest while Nyakane is yet to be rested.
Nyakane has been the standout player in the Bulls frontrow this season and will be a key component of Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer’s Rugby World Cup plans with Nyakane having shown versatility in covering both loosehead and tighthead prop with aplomb this season.
Even though Nyakane’s primary and preferred position is at loosehead prop, the Bulls have been forced through the injuries to Werner Kruger and Marcel van der Merwe during the course of the season to move Nyakane to tighthead where he has stood head and shoulders above most tighthead props in the country.
Ludeke, though, might be forced to renege on the agreement with Saru for a week or two as the Bulls press hard to break their eightmatch losing streak abroad and look for that elusive win when they play against the Chiefs on Friday and the Brumbies next week.
What will be important for Ludeke is to select his strongest team and that will be a frontrow that includes Nyakane, Strauss and Van der Merwe.
Further compounding Ludeke’s dilemma is that he needs to have Nyakane in his team so as not to field a near lily-white team which would go against the gentlemen’s agreement with Saru for the franchises to have a fair sprinkling of players of colour in their starting lineups and match-day squads.