Ken Borland

Travelling to the inner city of Johannesburg to play at Ellis Park has never been easy for any visiting team, whether international or domestic, and Bulls coach Jake White was certainly not shocked when his team were upset 34-33 by the Lions in their Rainbow Cup match there at the weekend.

While the Lions were winless and at the bottom of the log, they had been extremely competitive and could easily have won a couple of games already before they hosted the Bulls. It was a potential banana peel and White was wary, with good cause as the Lions rode a superb scrummaging display and the Bulls’ own mistakes to inflict the first loss on the Currie Cup champions since March 26.

“The Lions are always difficult to play against and they had a really good scrum today. It’s not something we can’t fix and we’re learning as coaches as well, what resources we have. But you don’t know how they are going to react under pressure unless they are put in those situations. When you’re winning, you take the good; now we have to take this knock on the chin and learn from it.

“Playing under pressure is the only way you learn how to handle it and we were able to see certain players under pressure today. A lot of our youngsters were under that pressure for the first time and some of the decision-making was a bit wrong. Full credit to the Lions, but it’s not as if we need to reassess everything, this is an opportunity for the team to grow,” White said.

The Bulls actually played well to take a 33-20 lead but then fell asleep and made a host of costly errors.

“We were leading 33-20 with 15 minutes left but then shot ourselves in the foot by things like dropping kick-offs and not finding touch, and then there were the scrums as well. If you can’t get your set-piece right then every penalty just puts you under more pressure. I have to stress how small the margins are in this competition and you can’t afford to drop your guard.

“Although the Lions played really well, we probably lost the game because at 33-20 we did enough to win it. We scored five tries so our attack was not too bad and Nollis Marais has worked really hard on our breakdown work, which has become a point of difference for us. You don’t have to say much about Johan Grobbelaar, Duane Vermeulen and Marco van Staden, but a lot of other guys are also making the right decisions at the rucks,” White said.

When Sharks coach Sean Everitt loans out most of his starting line-up to the Springboks this week, it will give him the chance to work with the players who are likely to play for the bulk of the rest of the year and fix the problems that were evident in their weekend loss to the Stormers.

This is a bye week for the South African teams in the Rainbow Cup and the Springboks will be holding an alignment camp. Then the stars will return for the last two weeks of the competition and what has now become a three-horse race for a place in the June 19 final against the European winners, following the Sharks’ weekend loss to the Stormers and the Lions upstaging the log-leading Bulls.

“Playing local derbies four weeks in a row has been really tough and it takes a toll physically. The guys deserve some rest and we’ll now have a week to work hard on the larger squad, get them ready for the Currie Cup. It’s a good opportunity for me to work closely with them, make sure they are ready to rock ‘n roll.

“Losing two in a row won’t give me sleepless nights, but I’ll be pondering how to fix the problems. And I’m not worried because the problems are fixable; if there was a lack of effort, enthusiasm or energy then we would be in trouble, but you can’t question the effort of the team, they worked hard and gave everything against a very powerful Stormers pack,” Everitt said after their 22-25 defeat at Kings Park.

The Sharks intimated that they would rather have taken on the Stormers with the sun out, instead of the overcast, wet weather which forced them into an arm-wrestle against one of the better packs in the competition.

“The Stormers always try to slow us down, we scored tries from quick lineouts and quick taps in Cape Town, that’s a part of our game and we got reward for that in our last match against them. We want to play a fast tempo of rugby but it was difficult in these conditions, especially late in the second half, when it rained quite hard. We had dominance for the first 30 minutes and for patches in the second half.

“But the lineout is a massive source of possession and a big contributor to the number of tries you score. We did really well in the first half, but we were under the pump in the second half, the Stormers have three really good jumpers, some really tall timber. So there’s a lot of hard work ahead on that, that’s the main area that let us down, while we also had lapses in defence,” Everitt said.

Replacement flyhalf Tim Swiel kicked a 77^th minute penalty and sealed a 25-22 win for the Stormers over the Sharks in their Rainbow Cup match at a wet and miserable Kings Park in Durban on Saturday.

The penalty was awarded when Sharks loosehead prop Ox Nche was caught scrumming in at a set-piece inside the 22. The Sharks then lost a lineout, for the fifth time, inside Stormers territory and spent the final minute desperately trying to run the ball out of their own 22 before a knock-on ended the game.

The Sharks started the game strongly and were 10-0 up after the first quarter as their dominance of the early scrum exchanges led to flyhalf Curwin Bosch kicking a phenomenal angled penalty from 60 metres out and Nche forcing his way over for the opening try.

But a patch of very poor rugby by the Sharks around the 25^th minute then saw the momentum shift and the Stormers gained the ascendancy for the rest of the first half. A couple of iffy tactical kicks by Bosch allowed wing Edwill van der Merwe to counter-attack from 65 metres out and he put in a brilliant run, helped by dismal Sharks tackling, and scored under the posts.

Van der Merwe scored a second try shortly before the break as the Stormers went into halftime with a 12-10 lead.

The contributions of loose forwards Pieter-Steph du Toit and Siya Kolisi in the early stages of the second half will please people who have the Springboks’ interests at heart, but it was Du Toit who made the more lasting impact and was declared man of the match at the end of the tight contest.

Du Toit started the second half superbly by surging over for a try from 30 metres out after hooker Bongi Mbonambi and scrumhalf Herschel Jantjies had combined well off a lineout drive, putting the Stormers 19-10 up.

But Sharks scrumhalf Jaden Hendrikse then took a quick tap-and-go at a penalty and passed out wide to Kolisi, who bumped off a tackle, made a break and then sent wing Yaw Penxe racing away for the try.

The Sharks scored again two minutes later in freakish fashion to take a 22-19 lead. The Stormers were hard on attack when a pass rebounded off the head of Sharks fullback Aphelele Fassi, who was always quick to get off the line in defence.

Fassi beat Van der Merwe to the ball, kicked through and scored. Some people may have been concerned about the legality of the try coming so soon after Du Toit had tapped a penalty, but he had already run five metres while the Sharks were retreating so the home side were not offsides.

But the Sharks’ ill-discipline cost them in the end as prop Thomas du Toit then blocked Pieter-Steph du Toit off the ball, allowing Swiel to level the scores in the 55^th minute.

A yellow card to wing Sbu Nkosi in the 69^th minute, after repeated team infringements, did not help the Sharks’ cause, and ultimately they were their own worst enemies with too many soft moments.

Scorers

Sharks – Tries:  Ox Nche, Yaw Penxe, Aphelele Fassi. Conversions: Curwin Bosch (2). Penalty: Bosch.

Stormers – Tries: Edwill van der Merwe (2), Pieter-Steph du Toit. Conversions: Abner van Reenen (2). Penalties: Tim Swiel (2).

The Sharks are adamant that the Bulls should not think things are too roomy at the top of the Rainbow Cup log and they have also promised the Stormers no armchair ride when they meet at Kings Park on Saturday.

The Bulls hammered the Sharks 43-9 last weekend to take a three-point lead in the Rainbow Cup standings, but that could be overturned when they come to Durban on June 12, in the last round of round-robin play.

Of course the Sharks, in the meantime, need to see off the challenge of the Stormers, and coach Sean Everitt has warned the Cape side not to judge his team by last weekend’s performance. And he has promised that the same pack that he said was “manhandled” by the Bulls is ready to fight fire with fire against the visitors this weekend.

“Given our play in the last 20 minutes against the Bulls, the Stormers might see an opportunity and they definitely have a good pack. We saw in the Currie Cup that they were very forward-oriented and I think they will go back to that because they were probably lucky to win against the Lions and will want to tighten up. But we are unbeaten at Kings Park for one-and-a-half years and we will protect our fortress.

“It’s never pleasant getting a beating like that one in Pretoria and the guys have taken a lot of criticism, a lot of pressure has been put on them. But it could be personal for them on Saturday because you should never judge a team on one game and people forget we beat the Stormers in Cape Town three weeks ago. Our team hasn’t changed, we just had an off day,” Everitt said.

Everitt maintained that there is still not much between his team and the high-flying Bulls, despite last weekend’s lopsided scoreline. He pointed to the Currie Cup final, which went into extra time, during which Lady Luck decided she no longer liked the Sharks.

“We were unfortunate not to win the Currie Cup final and you can’t expect to win six-out-of-six local derbies. There’s still a lot of rugby to be played and we’re certainly not out of the race with the Bulls only three points ahead and we’ve still got them at home, where we have not lost for a while.

“What an experience it would be to make the Rainbow Cup final, travel to Europe and play against the best they can offer. That would be just reward for finishing top of the Rainbow Cup and would provide us with a bit of a measure as to where we are, going into the Pro16,” Everitt said.