Young Bulls really impress coach Smal
THE Bulls’ performance in securing a 43-37 Currie Cup victory over a star-studded Lions team was so good that even the normally stern coach Gert Smal had time to crack a joke afterwards.
“There were actually a lot of the URC (United Rugby Championship) guys in the change room now, and I actually sort of made a joke and said that they were as good as the URC team – if not better than the URC team that we have at the moment! But that was just a joke. But they really played well in the first half,” Smal said.
But like with most good jokes, there is an element of truth to Smal’s statement. As they scored five tries and built up a 35-10 lead in the first half, the Bulls swept the Lions off the park at Loftus Versfeld.
Some of the handling was sublime from the likes of Keagan Johannes – who again provided a slick service from the base – young flyhalf Juan Mostert looked assured in controlling the tempo and with his kicking at goal and out of hand, while outside backs such as Stedman Gans, David Kriel and James VerityAmm looked lively whenever they got the ball.
And despite struggling in the scrums, young Bulls forwards such as Reinhardt Ludwig, Jaco Labuschagne and Janko Swanepoel got stuck in to the Lions pack, and they were backed up superbly by old warhorses Bismarck du Plessis and captain Lizo Gqoboka.
They also had to deal with the departure of the injured Mostert early in the second half, which saw Johannes moving to flyhalf and Bernard van der Linde coming on at scrumhalf.
Remember that this was the Lions URC team – barring flank Vincent Tshituka and prop Carlu Sadie – so it was no mean feat that this Bulls side were so dominant for most of the first half.
Yes, the Johannesburg side stormed back in the second half, but the Bulls showed real character to halt the onslaught and close out the victory when Lions skipper Burger Odendaal passed the ball straight into the hands of Richard Kriel in the in-goal area, and Kriel scored the winning try.
“Where we sit, you can’t really see all the detail. But I don’t want to say anything about the ref at this stage.
“There is a certain system that’s in place, where we can communicate things through to Mark Lawrence, so we will do that. At the end of the day, he is a referee and referees aren’t perfect,” Smal said about the slew of penalties after half-time.
“But coming back to the penalties that we gave away, it was also because they started playing really well in the second half, especially with their 12 centre (Odendaal), which is quite a big guy, running at… which is actually our nine (Johannes). We had to play him at 10 because Juan Mostert got injured.
“So they got a lot of momentum and that put us on the back foot.
And when that happens, you are always going to be a little bit under pressure – you have to close all the spaces down.
“I said to them in the change room now, I am really proud of them. We got the win, and as a coach, you always want to become better.
“You want each player to look at himself and see what he can do better, so that we can put the type of game that we played in the first half together for 80-plus minutes.”
The Bulls are now top of the Currie Cup log on 42 points, one ahead of the Cheetahs, who have a game in hand, and they will finish their round-robin stage against the Pumas on May 27 at Loftus Versfeld and the Cheetahs on June 11 in Bloemfontein.
But all their focus will now be on the URC team’s trip to Wales this week for Friday’s final league clash against the Ospreys in Swansea.
Captain Gqoboka, though, cannot wait to get stuck into the unbeaten Cheetahs.
“It’s awesome to be at the top of the table. We know that we still have the Pumas at home and Cheetahs away, and it’s exciting as we lost in the first round to the Cheetahs at home, so it will be nice to go to the Free State and give it our best,” the loosehead prop told