Marais praises spirit and belief
WIN MEANS PLENTY FOR THE PLAYERS Players were told not to kick the ball in the last 20 minutes.
The fact that the Bulls were able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in their weekend Super Rugby match against the Cheetahs in Pretoria shows there is still plenty of spirit and belief in the team despite their troubled season so far, according to coach Nollis Marais.
The Bulls trailed 11-3 at halftime, unable to get any momentum nor flow to their game due to serious deficiencies in basic skills, but a better second half saw them claw their way back into the match and they were able to snatch the win through a 74th-minute try by Jesse Kriel, as they turned turnover ball into rapid counter-attack. It gave them the lead for the first time in the match and the 20-14 scoreline was the final total.
“This win means plenty for the players and it shows that they believe in each other, which is the most important thing for a team. If they did not have that belief, they would have lost today. So you can see the spirit is there, they believed they could win.
“At 11-3 down at half-time, I just said to the guys in the changeroom that they must stick to it, they’re a bunch of 21-year-olds and you’ve got to settle the game down. I’m very proud of the fight they showed, we should never have been in that position but it would have been so easy just to slip a tackle at the end and end up losing,” Marais said after the game.
Marais reiterated that he believes his team are still a potent threat with ball-in-hand, but acknowledged that their error-rate is holding them back.
“We’re still losing the ball because of silly little errors and that is something we need to look at very carefully. Of our first four lineouts there was only one where we got clean ball. I don’t think the way our forwards are playing is good enough, to be honest, with three of the best locks in the country we should be better. We’re not giving the backs enough opportunity to attack.
“We know we can be better with ball-in-hand and I don’t know why we sometimes try these little kicks when we have four-on-two. We’ve got the backline but it is a very young team and I think they feel the pressure and then just kick. They need to get that confidence and I said to them in the last 20 minutes that there must be no kicks, they must just play!
“We must have more belief when we have the ball because we can be brilliant when we carry the ball,” Marais said.