There’s still a lot of work to be done at Bulls, says Pienaar

PINE PIENAAR may have a chequered history with the Bulls but when it comes to talking about his previous stint at the union, avoidance is his preferred method of defence.

The defensive coach left the Bulls under a cloud in 2017 when he was retrenched along with four other staff members.

Before his return to the Bulls, Pienaar was a consultant to the Cheetahs and Kubota Spears while he was also the director of sport at Waterkloof Hoerskool.

But the time away from Loftus seemed to have reinvigorated him, with the Bulls defence holding strong to keep the Stormers from the tryline in their 40-3 victory men from Cape Town over the weekend.

Asked whether he had a point to prove after his previous stint with the Bulls, Pienaar deflected the question.

“No, never, it is about making a difference and it was a good way to start off but there is still a lot of work to be done,” Pienaar said yesterday.

When Bulls coach Pote Human was quizzed about Pienaar following Saturday’s match, he said Pienaar made a strong statement with the team’s defensive efforts.

“I think he did have something to prove, people wrote him off, and he left under a cloud,” Human said.

“But he came back and he is really doing great work and the players are listening to him. I am very happy with the guys (management team) that I have.”

Pienaar said while their defensive systems seemed to be working well, he gave most of the credit to the players.

“If you look at the score then you can say we were pretty much spot on but there are a lot of fundamentals we can work harder on and that is the best we can do to build our defence on,” Pienaar said.

“The guys work hard for each other and physicality wise we were up there, but in certain areas we were under pressure if the Stormers played the right option.

“We are fortunate to have this calibre of players on the field and if they can make the right decisions at the right time it helps.”

Pienaar said the team still needed to work on a few aspects of their defensive game after making a few changes.

“There are certain fundamentals we said we wanted to build our defence and attack on which boils down to attitude,” Pienaar said. “But system-wise we changed a bit and hopefully we can be better with every game. It was definitely not perfect against the Stormers.

“So there is still a lot of stuff in the system where we can be better at and look at in different ways, so it is a work in progress for us.”