Bulls start slowly but get the win

Jake White’s Bulls were trapped in the starting gates for which must have felt like an eternity in their opening Super Rugby Unlocked (SRU) clash at Loftus yesterday.

But in the end they prevailed 30-23 over a plucky Griquas on an opening weekend that also yielded wins for the Sharks and Cheetahs.

It wasn’t the restart to competition the Bulls had hoped for, or many had expected from the Pretoria side.

The Bulls, who looked so slick and incisive two weeks earlier against the Sharks, could barely string together a cohesive passage of play against opponents who, to be fair, were demonically disruptive.

Griquas managed to stunt the Bulls at the breakdown, thus denying the home team the quick ruck ball with which their heavy carriers were supposed to wreak havoc.

Denying the hosts gainline momentum was one part of the Griquas master plan but it also required their main decision-makers to be on point.

Scrumhalf Zak Burger, who sported one of several luxurious mullets on the opening weekend of SRU, brought the nuisance factor, and flyhalf George Whitehead was predictably consistent until yellow-carded.

In the end however the Bulls called on experience to get the job done but it took them all of 36 minutes to get on the scoreboard. They found further reward on the cusp of the break when locks Jason Jenkins and Ruan Nortje combined well in a try for the latter.

The converted try levelled the score, which seemed appropriate as there wasn’t much to separate the teams from what they wore.

If we scored before halftime from that maul 5m out it would be a different question. But I feel that was not the reason for us losing

Perhaps on instruction of their coach, the Bulls, thankfully, re-emerged in predominantly white jerseys but the halftime pep talk had not sunk in.

Losing No 8 Tim Agaba to a yellow card straight after the break wasn’t part of the hosts’ blueprint and when Griquas fullback Anthony Volmink showed explosiveness in his jump and dexterity in collecting a stray pass before running clear, the Bulls looked up against it. They dug deep however with captain Arno Botha firmly in the vanguard as they came from behind.

They said in the build-up to their clash against the Pumas that they did not have a point to prove. Instead, the Cheetahs, so unceremoniously dumped from the PRO14, didn’t just make one point but kept racking them up in their 53-31 win against the Pumas in their SRU opener in Bloemfontein.

At times the hosts’ offload gamewas simply sublime. They ran into space with a spring in their step with a support runner ubiquitously on hand.

The match was a personal triumph for the region’s prodigal son Frans Steyn, who had left Bloemfontein before he could make his senior debut before the 2006 season.

On Friday night the Sharks got a 19-16 opening-day win over the Lions in Durban.

The result could have gone the Lions' way had their decision-making not come to bite them in the back.

Captain Elton Jantjies, who eschewed an opportunity for a last-minute penalty which would have tied the scores, felt the game slipped from the Lions’ grasp elsewhere.

“We will have a review of that in terms of certain leaders in the team. And then we make collective decisions. That’s what we do. If we scored before halftime from that maul 5m out it would be a different question. We can always learn but I feel that was not the reason for us losing the game. There are other areas in which we need to improve,” said Jantjies.