Ken Borland

There has been probably more activity in the offices of Loftus Versfeld than out on the field recently as director of rugby and head coach Jake White decides who gets one of the 45 Bulls contracts he is limited to and he admitted that some of the players in the squad named on Monday to play the Pumas in Mbombela on Tuesday have already been told they are going to be released.

So while the Prep Series warm-up match will not give some players the opportunity to sway White’s mind, he did say he still wanted to be fair to them by giving them game time that could get them noticed by other franchises. The former Springbok coach is intent on creating a super-squad at Loftus, full of internationals, to challenge the powerhouses of the North.

“There are some players that I want to see if I should re-sign them or not as we are planning for the Rainbow Cup and there are some juniors I have not seen as much as I’d like. Combinations are on trial too and of course some of these players could start in the Rainbow Cup, where I have to make sure our squad is good enough and our combinations are tried and tested.

“But I’d like to be fair to every player so I don’t wait right to the end before they know they need to make other plans. I’m trying to create a really talented group, a squad that can beat teams in Europe that have Test players on the bench. They don’t have average players filling in places in the squad. So my mind may be made up about someone, but I still want to give them game time so they can prick up the ears of other franchises,” White said on Monday.

One of those unfortunate players who is in the squad to play the Pumas but will be released is utility back Clinton Swart, who White signed in July 2020 and clearly rated very highly after coaching him in Japan. But the inspirational fashion in which Cornal Hendricks has fitted in at inside centre and the promise shown by Chris Smith as the back-up flyhalf have meant Swart’s opportunities have been limited. And with Springboks Johan Goosen and Damian Willemse probably arriving in Pretoria later this year, White said he could see no space for the 27-year-old.

“I know Clinton very well and I have a bit of a soft spot for him because he’s a great, tough guy who trained hard. He added value, but has been unfortunate that other players have developed so much in a short space of time. Cornal was named the best back in the Currie Cup and with Chris going so well, it was impossible to play Clinton and we’re struggling to commit to him long-term.

“So my mind is made up, I’m glad we helped him and I hope he can find something else. It’s no secret we’re looking at Damian and Johan could be coming, so we will have several permutations for an explosive backline. If a player has to leave a champion franchise like the Bulls, I like to think their market value will be much higher because they’re playing in a province where the best are playing,” White said.

Bulls: David Kriel, Madosh Tambwe, Marnus Potgieter, Marco Jansen van Vuren, Stravino Jacobs, Chris Smith, Embrose Papier, WJ Steenkamp, Tim Agaba, Nizaam Carr (C), Janko Swanepoel, Jan Uys, Mornay Smith, Joe van Zyl, Gerhard Steenekamp. Bench – Janco Uys, Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Nolan Pienaar, Reinhardt Ludwig, Werner Gouws, Bernard van der Linde, Clinton Swart, Richard Kriel, Henco Beukes, Willie Potgieter, Dawid Kellerman.

Sharks coach Sean Everitt admitted that his team still has plenty of work to do on their efforts in the tight-loose, despite their comfortable winning margin of 42-19 over the Pumas in Nelspruit at the weekend.

The Pumas were typically robust and confrontational up front, but where the Sharks had a decided edge was in terms of their clinical finishing, and the sharpness of both their backline and the rolling maul. But were it not for the Pumas being extremely wasteful on several occasions when they were inside the Sharks’ 22, the match would have been a lot closer.

“We’re very happy with the result, especially since last year we lost here, and we showed a lot of energy for the full 80 minutes, but the breakdowns let us down and that still needs a lot of attention. Francois Klelinhans and Jeandre Rudolph are both very good on the ball, but we need to tidy that area up,” Everitt said.

Not that the Sharks coach was upset with his forwards though, because there were areas where they played much better than last weekend against the Bulls in Pretoria, and the Sharks were expert at mining that front-foot ball and turning it into gold.

“There were obviously things we worked on after the Bulls game and it was great to see the set-piece come through – we were rewarded for some good scrums and we didn’t lose a lineout. Plus our maul was really good and led to two tries for us,” Everitt said.

Stormers coach John Dobson admitted that the Bulls had played them off the park in their Super Rugby Unlocked match at Loftus Versfeld at the weekend, with play being called off at the 63-minute mark with the Bulls enjoying  commanding 39-6 lead.

Dobson pointed to the fact that the Stormers were about to enjoy their first put-in at a scrum when the match was ended due to lightning as a measure of how error-free the Bulls were, and their coach Jake White admitted that his team were certainly where they wanted to be at this stage of the season, and probably playing better than he expected.

“As a coach, one can always be critical of little things and we will learn from those and get better. But I’m looking forward to where we will be in two months’ time if this is the sort of improvement the guys are showing now. We are where we want to be, considering that we haven’t been together for long, only four or five weeks. So the future just looks good.

“But we have won nothing yet and we will prepare the same every week, and make sure we still keep our detail sharp. We have a good group of players and I’m looking forward to seeing how they grow. We managed to hold on to the ball and the first 40 minutes are the best rugby the Bulls have played in a long time. What I enjoy the most was the continuity we played with,” White said after the match.

The game was touted as being a massive forward battle, but predictions of an intense, tight match were made foolish by the Bulls forwards putting in an exceptional display.

“The forwards were outstanding, the scrum and the maul, but I was especially pleased with their ability to adapt and the interplay between backs an forwards was very pleasing. We knew the Stormers would use their forward pack to get out of trouble and our plan was to nullify them and get them to play out of their own half. The game hasn’t changed and it’s still your pack of forwards that wins you the game.

“Our pack was outstanding, the scrums were very good and the way they carried the ball, their offloading, and the way they played between the backs was great. They gave the platform for the backs to play. And then watching Morne Steyn and Ivan van Zyl and the impact they made was great, and I’m really enjoying the combination at centre between Stedman Gans and Cornal Hendricks,” White said.

Cricket South Africa chief executive Jacques Faul admitted on Monday that the organisation were “a bit naïve and ambitious” to think the sport would be let out of its Covid-19 Lockdown cell as early as this weekend, following the postponement of the Solidarity Cup.

The new format of the game, devised by 3TCricket, and a return to onfield action were launched amid much fanfare last week, with SuperSport Park in Centurion set to stage the contest involving three teams playing a 36-over match on Saturday, June 27.

But by the weekend CSA were forced to backtrack as government said they had not yet approved the plans, despite director of cricket Graeme Smith saying SuperSport Park had been “cleared” and “permits were in place” for the event to take place.

“We were a bit naïve and ambitious with the date because it did not leave us with a lot of time to work through all the protocols. Because SuperSport Park is in a hotspot, we now need Department of Health approval too. But we will take it on the chin and plan better. We really want to seek the correct procedure and it’s not something we can just push through,” Faul told The Citizen on Monday in a phone call.

CSA expect to be able to announce a new date for the Solidarity Cup in a few weeks.

As part of their efforts to convince the Department of Sports and Arts and Culture that they have measures in place to ensure a safe return to cricket, CSA have conducted more than 100 Covid-19 tests on their staff and those of the franchises, including players. Sport24 revealed on Monday that seven of those tests had returned positive results.

But those safety processes now have to be approved by two government departments so the wait to get back out on to the cricket field will last a little longer.

But if thousands of golfers are out and about on hundreds of courses around the country, then it surely won’t be long before cricket, in what is going to be a tightly-controlled environment, returns too.