Ken Borland

The Saracens rugby club – the one in London with such strong South African connections – once famously organised a camel race as part of the entertainment before a match they were holding at Wembley Stadium, but venue officials refused to allow it for any number of bureaucratic reasons. Perhaps if they had staged a dromedary race it would have been okay.

The Bulls are hoping such drastic measures to attract a crowd to Loftus Versfeld are not necessary for their last home game of the United Rugby Championship regular season, against Glasgow Warriors on Friday night. Amidst the drama of trying to nail down both a URC playoff spot and a place in the lucrative European Champions Cup next season, Bulls captain Marcell Coetzee spoke on Tuesday of the lift spectators have given the team over the last few weeks. He even dared to suggest the Bulls are going to embrace the pressure of two must-win games to end the round-robin phase.

“The last few weeks have really been must-win games and we’ve had phenomenal support at Loftus. The team has fed off that,” Coetzee said.

“We put ourselves into this position where we now have to fight for a playoff place, but we embrace it. At one stage we were bottom of the log, and the fightback just shows the quality and culture in our squad.

“Anything can still happen and Glasgow are a dangerous team. We’re not reading too much into their scoreline last weekend, but the Stormers showed how to break them down by being patient.

“The Stormers knew that sticking to their system would pay off, they created opportunities and then took them. We’ve created a few opportunities ourselves, but we have to make sure we take them,” Coetzee said.

Glasgow Warriors are the leading Scottish side in the competition, but they were hammered 32-7 last weekend by the Stormers in Cape Town.

Coetzee is only 30 years old so the star loose forward is still far too young to be pensioned off when it comes to international aspirations, but he says his focus at the moment is forming a tight-knit unit with Elrigh Louw and Cyle Brink.

“At the moment I just want to plough back into the Bulls team, helping guys like Elrigh, and enjoy my rugby,” Coetzee said. “We have a very good loose trio group, it’s lovely to be here and have all those guys behind you.

“Cyle has come into the system very well too, although he struggles a bit with the Afrikaans! He has added a lot of value and is growing every game, he also helps a lot at the breakdown. We are all busy making each other better,” Coetzee said.

Bangladesh’s batsmen discovered at the Wanderers that there are no vaccinations against the pace and bounce of Kagiso Rabada when he is at his fiery best, and South Africa’s ace fast bowler is hopeful that they won’t have time to figure out how to handle him and his fellow quicks before the ODI series decider at Centurion on Wednesday.

With Rabada leading the way with an outstanding 5/39, Bangladesh were restricted to just 194/9 in the second ODI, South Africa levelling the series when they chased down that target with seven wickets and 76 deliveries to spare. After a slightly flat performance in the first match at SuperSport Park, this time the Proteas pacemen came out firing.

While Rabada said he was still not sure why they struggled for wickets in the first ODI, he did say the extra pace and bounce of the Wanderers pitch made them more lethal.

“It’s a question I’m still asking myself,” Rabada said at the Wanderers after his man-of-the-match display. “I guess this pitch did a bit more with the new ball.

“I thought we bowled very well in the first 10 overs of the previous game too, but were just unfortunate not to get the breakthrough. And on the Highveld, you’re guaranteed to score quicker once you’re in, as the ball gets older it’s better to bat.

“But there was more bounce at the Wanderers, we got the ball in the right areas and it was good to us. You generally want to use the extra bounce and pace at the Wanderers.

“The talk is that the subcontinent teams are not able to deal with the bounce as well as we do because we’ve grown up here. You can’t just rock up and expect to bounce them out, but you try use the conditions to the best of your ability,” Rabada said.

While the Proteas were delighted with their all-round performance at the Wanderers, they are dismayed by their continued tendency to start series poorly, a destructive habit when it comes to a growing side developing consistency.

“It is a concern because we always want to throw the first punch but we keep finding ourselves in this position.

“We don’t do it on purpose and we don’t want to make our job even harder. So we still hve a bit of work to do before we go back to Centurion,” Rabada said.

The Proteas dare not reproduce their performance of the first ODI.

Despite the Northerns Titans having eventually seen off a determined second innings by the Central Gauteng Lions half-an-hour before tea on the final day, coach Mandla Mashimbyi was not far from having kittens in the changeroom for the next two-and-a-half hours as they waited anxiously for the result of the Eastern Province Warriors match against the Free State Knights in Bloemfontein on Monday.

The Titans eventually bowled the Lions out for 273 in their second innings, Mitchell van Buuren leading the resistance with a tremendously defiant 107, remarkably, his second century of the match. He was ably supported by Reeza Hendricks, who denied Northerns for more than four hours in scoring 89.

But off-spinner Simon Harmer kept chipping away for the Titans and his 6/84 in 33.2 overs took his season tally to 44 wickets at an average of just 19.29.

Northerns were left with just 62 to win and they did that in 13.1 overs with seven wickets in hand.

But Free State were busy collapsing in Bloemfontein, slumping to 82/8, a lead of just 143, against the EP Warriors, who had declared on their overnight score of 166/3, still 61 runs behind. With the Titans winning at Centurion, Eastern Province had to win their game to claim the title.

It was a tactic that very nearly paid off as they bowled superbly in swing-friendly conditions, Mthiwekhaya Nabe leading the way with 4/26 in 12 overs, while Akhona Mnyaka removed Paballo Mogoera (4) and Raynard van Tonder (0) with successive deliveries.

Patrick Botha is being released by the Knights, but the Northerns Titans may be inclined to look kindly on him as his 38 on Monday, following up his first-innings century, was crucial in keeping the Warriors in the field until the rain came shortly before the tea break.

The weather never improved and the umpires finally called off play in Bloemfontein at 5pm, much to the delight of the Titans team at Centurion.

A new-look Titans side triumphed thanks to an impressive all-round effort in the competition. The whole batting unit all averaged over 40 through the season – nine of them in total – while Harmer was well-supported by seamers Lizaad Williams (10 wickets @ 12.60), Aya Gqamane (14 @ 28.57), Corbin Bosch (18 @ 33.22) and Junior Dala (11 @ 35.81).

It would seem all is on track with the rebuild at SuperSport Park, the Titans having also finished runners-up in the CSA T20 Challenge last week.

Scores in brief of other games

KZN Dolphins 422 v Boland 422/8 declared (Pieter Malan 219*, Stiaan van Zyl 48, Shaun von Berg 40; Eathan Bosch 3/56, Prenelan Subrayen 3/124). Match drawn.

Western Province 576 v North-West 202 and 242 (Wesley Marshall 58, Senuran Muthusamy 101; George Linde 3-48). Western Province won by an innings and 132 runs.

It took deep into the second half before the Bulls were able to finally rout a boisterous Zebre Parma side 45-7 in their United Rugby Championship match at the Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi at the weekend and coach Jake White admitted that his team had suffered from a bit of over-eagerness in the first half.

Several chances went abegging in the first half and it was only thanks to two tries in the last 10 minutes of the first half that the Bulls went into the break 17-7 up.

“In the first 25 minutes we had to find our feet, so we scored 45 points in the last 55 minutes,” White said. “At the beginning there were a few chances we did not finish, but I’m generally quite happy with the way we played.

“It’s not that easy to come here to Parma, not even Munster managed to score more than 34 points here in January and they are one of the great European sides.

“Zebre had also only lost three players to their national side and were relatively unchanged. So there are a lot of positives for us, especially the five points that means we stay in the competition, but we will keep our feet on the ground.

“You’ve got to earn the right to go wide, we went too quickly a couple of times and there were knock-ons. As soon as you become more direct then you create the space out wide,” White said.

While White questioned the small number of times his team was awarded penalties for Zebre being offsides, he did say he was pleased with the tempo of the game allowed by referee Adam Jones.

“The offsides maybe could have been policed better, Zebre would shoot off the line and we got caught a bit, they were coming at us the whole time,” White said.

“But I was very happy with the pace of the game, the tempo was what we need in the URC for us to compete. It was a significant difference to what we’ve been getting at home.

“There was pace on the ball, a much higher ball-in-play time, and that allowed us to keep putting them under pressure with wave-after-wave of attack. The referee managed that well.

“We want to attack, you need to score tries when you’re playing in a whole year long competition. You have to back yourself to put points on the board. To score 45 away from home is the outcome we wanted,” White said.