Ken Borland

There will be a bonanza of rugby at Loftus Versfeld this week with the Bulls taking on the Free State Cheetahs in a Currie Cup game on Wednesday and then also hosting a United Rugby Championship Jukskei derby against the Lions on Saturday.

And, if the players’ comments at Monday’s press conferences are to be believed, they don’t know yet whether they will be playing in the Currie Cup, the URC or both. The Bulls are set to name their team to play the Cheetahs shortly before midday on Tuesday.

For some players, it may be a bit unsettling, but centre Harold Vorster said he is one of the Bulls who is quite happy with the dual squad arrangement.

“It’s a difficult thing running both a URC and a Currie Cup team at the same time. But we’re enjoying it, it doesn’t matter which one you play in. I don’t care which team I’m in, when you get a chance, you’re just excited to play.

“Your opportunity can come at any time of the week, especially with Covid, and you need to be on the same page as everyone else whether you’re playing Currie Cup or URC,” Vorster said on Monday.

Of course, the last time the Bulls played at Loftus Versfeld, they let slip a 26-18 lead with 12 minutes remaining to lose 30-26 to the Stormers, a maiden defeat at home with Jake White as coach. It left a sour taste in the month and the Bulls produced an impressive performance in response last weekend against the Lions at Ellis Park.

Now it is the Lions who travel to Pretoria eager to erase the hurt from their previous outing.

“The Stormers game was a big disappointment, but fortunately we got another opportunity to fix what went wrong against the Lions. Our focus was just on getting back on track and being the best we can be,” Vorster said.

“We put the Lions under a lot of pressure and executed very well. I don’t think the Lions lack anything, they’re still a very good side, and it’s a fresh week, Saturday is gone and over.

“I’m sure the Lions will prepare very well and we’ll have to set new standards for ourselves,” Vorster said.

For most observers, the Sharks rugby squad would seem to already have a special team environment going, representing the demographics of the country and, at the same time, leading the pack in terms of performance on the field and in the boardroom. But Springbok captain Siya Kolisi is confident that their culture is still budding, the best is yet to come.

Kolisi joined the Sharks a year ago amidst much fanfare and, even if his international commitments have meant he has not played as many matches for them as he would have liked, he has clearly settled in well and is contributing in a big way.

As the man who has driven so much of the highly-successful new Springbok team culture, Kolisi is ideally placed to comment on how the Sharks are building a new environment as well.

“Every sporting culture has a past that you have to take into account,” Kolisi said at Kings Park during a media weekend. “We’re still working towards something brilliant here.

“You have to acknowledge the past, you can’t change it but you need to learn from it. You need to have the conversations and understand what gets people going.

“Like with Eben Etzebeth, who was my first White friend. I love him as a person and we love each other’s families. So we have braais together but on some days we’ll go to the Chesa Nyama.

“It’s about being comfortable in your environment, but sometimes what is important to one person is not so much to the other. It doesn’t mean you can’t stand up for what you believe in,” Kolisi said.

Kolisi’s Springbok team-mate Lukhanyo Am is the Sharks captain and, as one of the most likeable and talented players around, he has had a key role in growing a successful culture at Kings Park.

“When you’re driving a culture, having a good environment off the field is nice too. We want to maintain high standards on and off the field.

“We try to keep the environment pure, not just me but everyone. Fortunately we have managed to get it right and keep the standards high,” Am said.

And then six months ago came the dreadful civil unrest in Durban that had the areas around Kings Park cowering behind barbed wire, using civilian patrols to protect themselves against the waves of looting and destruction. It was surely the greatest test of the Sharks’ culture.

“Last year was worse than the craziest scene you’d see in a movie,” Sharks CEO Eduard Coetzee said of the rioting. “It was such a test of our culture and we stood together.

“We’re trying to grow an inclusive culture here, both in terms of lifestyle and our community, and we’ve managed to grow in uncomfortable spaces, like Black Lives Matter.

“There’s not going to be any conflict if you talk about an issue like that, but there’s guaranteed to be conflict if you don’t talk.

“I don’t think we have our team culture dead right yet, it’s a thing that lives and evolves. A player could come into the culture tomorrow and not use the right language or not be accepted, and then we won’t get the performance side right,” Coetzee said.

For two weekends in a row, the Stormers have looked down and out on the road but have shown the same remarkable resilience to avoid defeat and keep themselves very much in contention to win the South African Shield in the United Rugby Championship.

Last weekend in Pretoria, they were 26-18 down against the Bulls with just 12 minutes left, but the Stormers scored two brilliant breakaway tries at the death to win 30-26. This weekend, they were trailing 19-3 after 51 minutes and their scrum was getting mangled against the Sharks in Durban, but they fought back to snatch a 22-22 draw.

Those seven away points have lifted the Stormers to 12^th place on the log with 14 points, just two behind the 10^th-placed Sharks.

“You’ve got to be quite resilient to be a Stormers player these days and these players have obviously got bucket-loads of that,” Dobson beamed after their latest escape. “Things went for us … I thought we were dead, buried and finished.

“We conceded 18 penalties, seven of them at the scrum. I’m not sure what era of Western Province rugby would ever have seen that sort of count before.

“To get seven points away from home these last two weeks is really good, especially when you play as poorly as we did today. That was probably our worst performance of the URC.

“But I’m really very happy, it proves the guys are tight, they are showing that fight. If we keep this group together, we could be a reasonable team. Just give us some time,” Dobson said.

The Stormers coach seemed to acknowledge that his side had been outplayed and that, on a normal day, they would have suffered defeat.

“It was not a great game from us, we lacked organisation and control and that slowed our game down, until we decided to speed things up a bit in the second half. But our game-management was poor.

“The truth is we were lucky. The Sharks were not at their full pomp, but they had enough chances to finish us. But we defended their maul well,” Dobson said.

Having seen his team squander a 19-3 lead in the third quarter and be forced to finish all-square on 22-all with the Stormers in their United Rugby Championship match at Kings Park at the weekend, Sharks coach Sean Everitt said it just goes to show how “small mistakes can have big consequences”.

And those consequences snowballed into an absolute train wreck in the last 10 minutes as the Sharks conceded three yellow cards and two penalty tries to leave them with a frustrating draw from a match they had otherwise dominated.

“We did everything right for 70 minutes and threw it away at the end,” Everitt bemoaned. “It shows that small mistakes have big consequences, especially when it comes to discipline.

“Our kicking at poles also wasn’t good enough and we had other opportunities to win the game as well – we could have finished off Grant Williams’ quick tap better and we had opportunities five metres out too.

“The guys are really disappointed and it’s not the result you want from a game you dominated. At 19-3 it then came down to discipline and we put ourselves under the pump; we beat ourselves tonight,” Everitt said.

The one big positive for the Sharks was their outstanding scrummaging display, thanks to the impressive cohesion shown by their all-Springbok front row of Ox Nche, Bongi Mbonambi and Thomas du Toit.

“The fantastic thing was the cohesion that was there,” Everitt said. “The Stormers won four scrum penalties against the Bulls last weekend so we knew we could take nothing for granted.

“But Thomas has been a standout in the URC, he had four great games in the UK, and has clearly learnt a lot in the last couple of years. He’s been outstanding.

“And Ox as well, they are all scrumming together with the Springboks and he has also come a long way. He’s being dominant every game,” Everitt said.

It was an assessment Stormers coach John Dobson was happy to co-sign, giving man of the match Nche glowing praise.

“Ox was absolutely magnificent and has shown incredible growth. He’s got to be one of the best looseheads in the world at the moment,” Dobson said.

On the final penalty try that Aphelele Fassi conceded with a deliberate knock-on, Everitt said his fullback should not have chased the ball so hard.

“Ideally you don’t want to get your hand to the ball unless you’re sure you can catch it. In that situation, you should try force them into the corner so at least the conversion kick is difficult.

“Or hover between the two men so they have to go over you. But with one back short already, it was always going to be difficult to defend,” Everitt acknowledged.