Ken Borland

Last September when the Bulls left Pretoria, their families and home comforts, and their support structures to head for Dublin and take on European powerhouses Leinster in their opening United Rugby Championship match it was with trepidation as they stepped into a daunting unknown.

Now when they head once more to the Irish capital for their semi-final against the same team on Friday night, they know more about the challenges they face but also about themselves and how much they have grown in the last eight-and-a-half months.

Coach Jake White said whether or not his underdogs manage to beat the tournament favourites, the game will be a valuable measurement of just how far the team have come and how much further they still have to go.

“We will see how good we are on Friday night, whether we have grown or not,” White said after their thrilling quarterfinal win over the Sharks. “I like to think that we are a better side.

“But it’s a chance to measure ourselves against an international-strength side, a team that has dominated Europe. You want to end a tournament playing your best rugby.

“Leinster were in rampant form in their quarterfinal after their Champions Cup disappointment last week. Friday night is a chance for the players to measure themselves against international players.

“This group has only been together for two years and we had two 19-year-olds in our 23-man squad. They are playing beyond their ages and their time together as a group,” White said.

Leinster stated their determination to win the inaugural URC, having won the last four editions of the Pro14 that preceded it, with chilling efficiency at the weekend as they destroyed Glasgow Warriors 76-14.

They will go into Friday night’s semi-final with confidence at a high, physically fresh and with home advantage. The Bulls will arrive in Dublin with a short week and bodies still battered from their gruelling tussle with the Sharks and the short turnaround thereafter.

In terms of experience, Leinster will go into the game with a massive advantage in terms of Test caps.

And White has stressed the most important part of their challenge on Friday night will be to start well, to not allow Leinster to play with the amount of possession they gifted the Sharks in the opening 10 minutes.

“Leinster’s front row probably has more international caps than our entire team, but the one thing I did see in La Rochelle’s Champions Cup final win was that you’ve got to hold them in the first half,” White said.

“You’ve got to keep them to a reasonable score at halftime. Leinster score the most points of all URC teams in the first 20 minutes of games. But in that final they took one or two bad options.

“So they are beatable but we have to not let them start well. You cannot play catch-up against a very good team like that, and if we give Leinster the ball for the first 10 minutes then they will not miss out on those opportunities,” White said.

Having staged a stirring comeback to level the scores at 27-27, the Sharks were meant to keep possession and force a penalty in the final stages of their nailbiting United Rugby Championship quarterfinal against the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld, coach Sean Everitt said.

They were also meant to avoid giving the Bulls the ball in their own 22. Sadly for the Sharks, they failed to do both things and the Bulls snatched victory with an 84^th-minute drop goal.

“The team is hurting and extremely disappointed,” a gutted Everitt said. “But I am proud of their effort and character. There were just a couple of soft moments, which were disappointing.

“At the end the result could have gone either way and we could have had a bit more fortune in the last five minutes. The plan was to hold on to the ball, put them under pressure and try to earn a penalty.

“We believed we could win, we showed tremendous character and never gave up. But our execution just needed to be a bit better. Things like that last pass just not going to hand.

“And we spoke about discipline and not giving the Bulls the ball in our 22, which is exactly what we did. They are clinical there and they have the best completion rate inside the 22 in the competition,” Everitt said.

The coach said he believes that if he mends a couple of things before next season, the Sharks can go all the way in 2022/23.

“If you look at where we have improved, the set-piece has come on a lot. But our balance on the field has improved too – now we can use our set-piece and we can score tries.

“We put ourselves in position to score tries today and there is no question about the character, culture or team environment because they showed their pride today.

“We just need to fix the rugby side and we especially need to work on the attacking breakdown. We gave the Bulls field position from there, it was a problem against Ulster and in our two previous games against the Bulls,” Everitt said.

By scoring twice in the final quarter to come back from 13-27 down, the Sharks showed their attack is plenty dangerous when it clicks. Phepsi Buthelezi is developing into a top-class ball-in-hand eighthman to provide the link to a backline in which wing Makazole Mapimpi was a threat throughout.

People should not run pell-mell to the conclusion that this is a poorly-coached Sharks team.

“I suppose if you look at Springboks and World Cup winners then we do have a lot of them and they can be proud of their effort. We played some really good rugby.

“I actually enjoyed watching the game even though my blood pressure was probably through the roof. We got the ball through the hands on a couple of occasions and looked really dangerous.

“Under-performance is a broad topic and rugby has a lot of variables. At times we’ve not played as well as we would have liked, and there are certain aspects of our game that need to be worked on.

“Obviously there are things to improve, and they are all fixable. The team has done exceptionally well and they want to play for the jersey,” Everitt said.

With the Sharks dominating the final quarter and the Bulls’ chances on the wane, coach Jake White had much on his mind in the last 10 minutes of the gripping United Rugby Championship quarterfinal at Loftus Versfeld at the weekend.

While the 58-year-old coach admitted that the tense finish had aged him, he too found it a thrilling spectacle. He had considered bringing on finisher supreme Morne Steyn, but with the scores locked at 27-27 and the final hooter having blown, that horse had bolted. But then it was starting flyhalf Chris Smith who kicked an 84^th-minute drop goal to put the Bulls into the semi-finals.

Much like his team, White said he still believed they would win, although the drop goal was an unexpected conclusion.

“I didn’t think for one moment about a drop goal, I thought they’d score a try, like Cornal Hendricks did earlier,” White said after the game. “The players had the belief and the desire to keep working.

“All credit to them for summing up the situation, although Chris said to me afterwards that he was terrified. But he’s not the first Northern Transvaal flyhalf to kick a matchwinning drop goal.

“In the first half, Chris had tried a crosskick in our own 22, which just shows that sometimes you make good decisions and sometimes you don’t. I was actually thinking of bringing Morne on, but as it turned out I kept the right guy on the field.

“The game changed five times in the last nine minutes, and I’m sure both coaches’ boxes thought they deserved penalties. But it was a fantastic game of rugby, that’s why people come watch rugby,” White said.

Typical of a knockout derby match, the quarterfinal between the sides that finished fourth and fifth on the final URC log saw both teams endure up-and-down fortunes. The Bulls had to weather a poor start and a storming finish by the Sharks; and the visitors had to fight back from conceding two tries in the first 10 minutes of the second half to fall 13-27 behind.

“We did not start well and gave the Sharks 10 points through our own mistakes,” White said. “I looked at the scoreboard clock and it said nine-and-a-half minutes and we hadn’t had the ball yet.

“Hopefully when we are more experienced we will understand the importance of holding on to the ball and not giving it away so easily.

“After the first half, I told the team we hadn’t played, we were hardly in the Sharks half and we hardly had the ball. I told them to make sure we start playing, and when we did, we looked outstanding at times.

“But I always knew it was going to be tough. The Sharks have nine Springboks in their starting line-up, five World Cup winners, so it was always going to go to the wire. It was about little moments, for them as well, but you have to win those,” White said.

A stubborn refusal to ever concede defeat has been in the genes of several Bulls sides, but the current group showed extraordinary determination and perseverance as an 84^th-minute drop goal by flyhalf Chris Smith snatched them a 30-27 victory over the Sharks in a thrilling United Rugby Championship quarterfinal at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday.

The Sharks had fully matched the Bulls in an enthralling and feisty first half which ended with the scores locked at 13-13. But the visitors seemed to have let the genie out the bottle when they conceded two tries in the opening 10 minutes of the second half.

Bulls captain Marcell Coetzee rounded off a period of concerted pressure for the first try, and then great work by outstanding fullback Canan Moodie and scrumhalf Zak Burger down the blindside earned the home side a lineout inside the Sharks’ 22. After a maul and some big carries, the Bulls went wide and centre Cornal Hendricks cut back inside to score.

But far from being brought to their knees by scoreboard pressure and altitude, the Sharks fought back superbly and finished strongly, a wonderful try by replacement loose forward Sikhumbuzo Notshe, and Curwin Bosch’s brilliant angled conversion, levelling the scores at 27-27 with five minutes remaining.

But Coetzee then won a vital turnover penalty deep inside the Bulls half. The lineout was set after Smith’s lengthy touchfinder, and the Bulls marched inexorably forward until they were under the Sharks’ poles. Tired bodies were smashing against each other at close range, neither side willing to give up, but then the ball was sent back to Smith, who slotted the winning drop goal to go with three conversions and two penalties in a perfect kicking display.

Before that, the Sharks had looked the more likely winners in the final quarter, their outside backs flourishing as they made the game more loose. Notshe’s try was a sublime effort as Lukhanyo Am, Ben Tapuai, Phepsi Buthelezi and Henco Venter had somehow kept the ball alive down the left touchline without much seeming to be on, and the Springbok then snaking over as the Bulls defence was caught offguard.

Earlier, the ever-threatening Makazole Mapimpi had taken the Sharks to the Bulls line with his magic basically disappearing three defenders, and scrumhalf Jaden Hendrikse then dummied and dived over from the ruck to begin the remarkable Sharks comeback. A storming run by brilliant eighthman Buthelezi had put them on the front foot.

The Bulls started the first half slowly as they made soft mistakes, but the second quarter would see them start to get into their game.

They scored the first try, very much against the run of play, through Madosh Tambwe, rounding off a spectacular intercept by Moodie, but the Sharks soon replied with a rolling maul try by hooker Bongi Mbonambi.

Scorers

Bulls – Tries: Madosh Tambwe, Marcell Coetzee, Cornal Hendricks. Conversions: Chris Smith (3). Penalties: Smith (2). Drop goal: Smith.

Sharks – Tries: Bongi Mbonambi, Jaden Hendrikse, Sikhumbuzo Notshe. Conversions: Curwin Bosch (3). Penalties: Bosch (2).