Ken Borland

It is not that surprising to see young Bulls lock Walt Steenkamp playing with extreme vigour in the Rainbow Cup, given that the 25-year-old came down with Covid at the end of last year, which then affected his heart, meaning he only returned to the field three weeks ago.

Steenkamp came down with a particularly virulent but rare strain of the Covid-19 virus that attacks the heart muscle, leaving him with arrhythmia, a condition in which his heart-rate struggles to return to normal after exercise. It actually required surgery in which the misfiring electrical signals are corrected.

“After five months of not playing it’s lovely to be back and playing in a winning team again. But it was quite heavy going through that, I will take nothing for granted again when it comes to playing rugby, it was a big fright. Fortunately the doctors never said I would definitely have to give up rugby, so I always believed I would come back.

“I actually had to have the operation twice, it’s called an ablation – they insert catheters that destroy the tissue that’s causing the abnormal heart signals, turn it into scar tissue. I had just 20% heart function before the operations but it’s all perfect now. And I really value being back in the lovely culture of this team,” Steenkamp said this week.

The former Free State Cheetahs and North-West Leopards star has made a big impact since joining the Bulls last November and has made some major plays, especially a crucial lineout steal five metres from their own line against the Sharks when the Bulls had just gone 19-9 up last weekend. Steenkamp clearly has a big engine, he is mobile but also a big-hitter in the physical exchanges.

But even as a relative youngster, Steenkamp has noticed how the game of rugby is changing, which presents fresh challenges, especially in terms of adapting to the new way tackles are being refereed, which many people consider a cancer in the game.

“Rugby has changed a lot, but Jake White is a mastermind, he knows what it takes to win and we’re doing the right things at the moment. The rules now make it harder to do what locks used to do. There’s more focus on fitness now and we have to be more careful, especially when it comes to tackles,” Steenkamp said.

Former World Cup winning flyhalf Joel Stransky is far from suggesting it is all blue skies with the standard of South African domestic rugby at the moment, and he says the Springboks have a perfectly good pair of No.10s in Handre Pollard and Elton Jantjies, and yet he still believes in-form Bulls pivot Morne Steyn needs to be chosen for the squad to play the British and Irish Lions in July.

Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber is set to call on more than 40 players for the Springbok squad and Steyn has been involved in the alignment camps held by Nienaber and director of rugby Rassie Erasmus. The 36-year-old star of the 2009 Lions tour has played a pivotal role in the Bulls’ dominance of local rugby over the last year and he produced a man of the match display when they hammered the top-of-the-log Sharks last weekend.

“Firstly, Morne was and still is a great player. But if Pollard and Jantjies were both here and firing, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. But there is a bit of concern over the flyhalf position and there should always be a place for that kind of experience and the way Morne’s delivering on the field at the moment – the way he’s controlling the game, leading from No.10.

“So I absolutely think he should be involved but will he be our No.1 flyhalf? I think if Pollard is fit then he’ll be first-choice, but Morne could maybe even be involved in a mentoring capacity, or as back-up. You know what you’re going to get with Morne, and he is standing up and shining, no mater how weak or strong you think the local competition is,” Stransky told The Citizen on Monday.

While there is no shred of a doubt that Pollard is playing in a top-class league for Montpellier in the French Top 14 and will be appearing in the Challenge Cup final this weekend, Jantjies was outstanding for relegation-threatened Pau last weekend, scoring 19 points and nearly steering them to an upset win over the formidable Racing 92 team.

Stransky believes domestic rugby in South Africa has been a hit-and-miss affair.

“The quality has not been great, although there have been some good signs at times, and that has maybe allowed a guy like Morne to shine. If our rugby was fast and furious, of tiptop quality, then we maybe would be having a slightly different conversation. But I don’t feel our games have been of the highest quality. But you also can’t deny Morne is standing up and delivering,” Stransky said.

Coach Jake White communicated to his Bulls team at the break that they “had not been great” in the first half, but then, with his bench coming on to great effect, he told them at the end of their impressive 43-9 hammering of the Sharks in their Rainbow Cup match at Loftus Versfeld at the weekend that he was “very proud” of them.

The Bulls only led 12-9 at halftime and were entrenched in an almighty arm-wrestle with the Sharks; but their slow poison bore fruit in the second half as they eventually overwhelmed their opponents, finishing with four tries and a bonus point.

“Slowly, slowly, we were able to grind them down because the Sharks are a very good side. The altitude caught up with them in the second half, but we didn’t have a great first half: We allowed too many balls to bounce and I think the Sharks probably won every contestable kick. But I’m very proud of the way we finished. Our forwards were really good and the backs played well in the second half.

“The bench coming on played a vital role and we were in the wonderful position to have two Springbok props on the bench. I wanted a full half from Lizo Gqoboka and Trevor Nyakane and it was great to be able to hold them back because I knew Thomas du Toit and Ox Nche would come hard at us. But our relatively young front row did very well in the first half and then Lizo made a big impact.

“Last week he did the same in setting up the try for Zak Burger and he’s also scrumming very well. He knows there’s an opportunity for him at the Springboks now that Beast Mtawarira has retired. Elrigh Louw was also fantastic for us and in the last 20 we were really able to make the tempo higher because we are really fit,” White said after the memorable triumph.

White once again praised openside flank Marco van Staden – “he has been unbelievable for us, week-after-week putting 150% into everything” – and it seems stupidity at this stage not to have him in the Springbok picture for the Lions series.

Veteran flyhalf Morne Steyn is apparently in the frame for the national squad and he gave a masterclass against the Sharks, deservedly winning the man of the match award. “His kicks through into the corner, turning the Sharks around, just showed his class. He slowly, slowly, squeezed the Sharks until they capitulated,” White said.

The coach also praised captain Duane Vermeulen and his three locks – Walt Steenkamp, Ruan Nortje and Janko Swanepoel – as being stand-out performers.

Sharks coach Sean Everitt was asked after their Rainbow Cup hammering at the hands of the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld what went wrong when they ran back out on to the field for the second half, and his simple answer was they were “manhandled”, which is why a 9-12 halftime deficit turned into a 43-9 hiding.

And it was the magnificent Bulls pack who did the damage, Duane Vermeulen once again being the talisman as the home forwards dominated the lineouts, scrummed powerfully, were commanding at the maul and without mercy on the gainline.

“The Bulls forwards were outstanding and forced us to give away penalties. They dominated us physically and we had no answer, which was disappointing. We battled to stop their maul and that led to penalty on top of penalty, for which we paid the price this time. We were manhandled.

“Conceding a penalty at the maul just compounds the problem because then they kick to the corner and maul again. And when we were in a good position, we would have a lineout turnover or concede a penalty at the scrum. So it’s not as if they exploited our game-plan, but rather the fundamentals of the game which we did not get right,” Everitt said after the heavy defeat.

The Sharks coach did not feel that his team were particularly ill-disciplined, but said an enormous penalty count against them was rather due to an unrelenting battering they were receiving. The Bulls were truly merciless and flyhalves Morne Steyn and Chris Smith converted all nine of their kicks at goal.

“I can’t fault the effort in the first half, when we stuck to the plan well and fired all the shots – the Bulls did not look like scoring. We attacked well in that first half, I thought our plan was well-balanced between kicking and ball-in-hand, but then we’d lose the ball out wide. It was just a case of not being able to convert.

“But in the second half they made us tired and fatigued and it’s always a tough day when you’re going backwards and conceding penalties. You have to credit the Bulls, they were outstanding, they hardly made a mistake and they kept us out. They have improved a lot under Jake White, but there is still a lot of rugby to be played and we are certainly not out of the race,” Everitt said.