Ken Borland

There was deserved delight for the Pumas at Kings Park at the weekend, but dismay for the Sharks as their dismal showing saw them go down 20-10 to the Mpumalanga side in their Currie Cup match in Durban.

Dejected Sharks coach Etienne Fynn had no qualms about the Pumas being worthy winners, but clearly he was more focused on the work his team have to do to ensure they do not drop out of semi-final contention. The Pumas are now just five points behind the Sharks, with a game in hand, while the KwaZulu-Natalians also have to keep an eye on Griquas, who trail them by just three points in fourth place.

“First of all, the Pumas totally deserved their win. We were poor and we need to work on all aspects of our game,” Fynn admitted. “It’s about sticking to the plan.

“More importantly, when you get opportunities to score, you have to take advantage, and when they get into our half, we have to close them down.

“I did expect some rustiness after our long break, but not that much rustiness. We were really not sharp enough.

“It’s pretty simple to come up with a plan that works, but then you have to ask why we did not execute it and what were the reasons for that?” Fynn said.

With the Sharks still to play three games (Free State away, Lions at home and WP away) and the Pumas having four matches left, as well as the three Griquas’ fixtures to consider, the totalizator is still full of different bets as to who will join the Free State Cheetahs and Bulls in the last four.

But Fynn knows his team have to pick themselves up and bounce back fast.

“As a team, we’ve got to own this loss and move forward positively. We play Free State in Bloem on Saturday and we all know how good a side we are up against. But our season is far from over,” Fynn said.

The Bulls, with numerous URC players in their squad, looked set to impose their old dominance of domestics rugby with a commanding first half against Griquas in their Currie Cup match at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday evening, but the visitors refused to accept a subservient role and nearly overthrew the form book in the second half.

The Bulls, having led 36-5 at halftime, eventually won 48-38 but Griquas were clearly the better team in the second half as they outscored the defending champions 33-12 in the second forty.

Tempo the chief difference for the Bulls

The Bulls’ experience of playing against European opposition in the URC served them well in the first half as Griquas just could not cope with the pace and intensity of the game. The visitors were properly dominated as the Bulls ran in six tries to roar into a commanding lead at halftime.

It was clinical from the Bulls as just about every pass stuck, the forwards gave them a wonderful platform and they played with quite some adventure.

Yellow cards lethal for Bulls & momentum for Griquas

The Bulls picked up where they left off in the early stages of the second half as a rolling maul try for hooker Jan-Hendrik Wessels took their lead to 41-5. But then two yellow cards – for prop Lizo Gqoboka, for collapsing a maul, and wing Madosh Tambwe, for a deliberate knock-on – in the space of three minutes were a massive blow for the Bulls. Playing against 13 men provided momentum and confidence for Griquas and they played tremendously well to provide a proper, competitive match for the crowd.

Tambwe’s sale price should go up

Wing Madosh Tambwe’s move to Europe has now been confirmed, but the new Loftus Versfeld star would have impressed his future employers with a dazzling first-half display. He started with a crunching tackle in defence, made excellent takes in the air and he looked lethal every time he ran with the ball. He would pop up all over the backline with an injection of raw pace, a perfectly-timed pass to wing Stravino Jacobs setting up the opening try in the third minute. His power game was also on display and he also set up the last try of the first half, by fullback Canan Moodie, by bumping off a couple of tackles and then breaking through the defensive line.

Griquas show they should not be underestimated

Scoring six tries gave Griquas a bonus point, keeping them in the top four on the log and maintaining their semi-final challenge. One of the premises of being in the semi-finals is that you are a highly competitive side and Griquas showed in the second half that they certainly belong.

Flank Hanru Sirgel led the way with two barnstorming tries as the Griquas pack began bossing affairs.

Scorers

Bulls: Tries – Stravino Jacobs (2), Cyle Brink, Reinhardt Ludwig, Canan Moodie, Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Harold Vorster. Conversions – Chris Smith (5). Penalty – Smith.

Griquas: Tries – Sango Xamlashe, penalty try, Munier Hartzenberg, Hanru Sirgel (2). Christopher Hollis. Conversions – Zander du Plessis (3).

The Bulls entered European rugby this season like a teenager with acne hesitantly stepping on to the dance floor, but captain Marcell Coetzee will be telling them they will become men when they participate in the Champions Cup later this year.

Despite a poor start to their United Rugby Championship campaign when they were thrown into the deep end and had to play Leinster, Connacht and Edinburgh away from home at the start of the UK winter, the Bulls have secured a quarterfinal place and the Champions Cup qualification that goes with it, with one match to spare.

Coetzee played in the premier European tournament while at Ulster from 2016-2021.

“I hope it doesn’t take as long for us to adapt and my brief to the guys will be that this is when you become men,” Coetzee said on Thursday. “It’s nice for us to have a bite of that cherry and it’s a great format.

“The fans love it and hopefully some will travel here and ours will go to Europe. It’s a very unique, special tournament and you come up against the top French, English and Irish clubs.

“It’s where you can really measure yourself as a team and as an individual. The tournament has such great traditions and it’s like playing international rugby.

“Our game was a bit stop/start when we were just playing domestically, our tempo went down, but we now recognise that there is a lot of tempo and creativity in Europe,” Coetzee said.

The Springbok flank was speaking at the announcement that the second edition of the Carling Black Label Currie Cup Champions Match will take place at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium on July 2, and, with the Bulls currently top of the Currie Cup log and facing two crucial games over the next fortnight, he said the Loftus Versfeld players are learning to deal with the discomfit of playing in two tournaments at once.

“At the beginning of the season, Jake White [coach] made it abundantly clear that the Bulls want to be competitive in all competitions. We want to win trophies and we all buy into the idea of a one-team union,” Coetzee said.

“For some games, doubling up has been really tough, like when we played Munster the one weekend, the Sharks in midweek and then Scarlets the following weekend.

“But we have good recovery systems in place so we can be competitive on all fronts. The most important thing is that the players are driven to do it from the inside.

“While at Ulster I can remember playing the Pro14 final the one week and Heineken Cup the next week. Your body takes a hammering, but doubling up is possible if the right structures and mental attitudes are in place,” Coetzee said.

South African golfers who participate in the ‘rebel’ Saudi Arabian league will still be welcome to play on the Sunshine Tour, as things stand at the moment, but come the showpiece Nedbank Golf Challenge at the end of the year, they could find themselves out in the cold.

LIV Golf, with Greg Norman as chief executive, promises guaranteed lucrative paydays for their competitors, with the winner of each tournament taking home £2.8 million and last place being worth £97 000. The eight-event series starts at Centurion Golf Club in southern England next month. But much of the controversy surrounding the league revolves around the fact it is funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

South Africans Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel and Branden Grace have all been linked with LIV Golf, while the PGA Tour in the United States and the DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour) have both threatened life bans for anyone who plays in the breakaway series.

Sunshine Tour commissioner Thomas Abt told The Citizen on Thursday that while they have their own regulations, they would respect the DP World Tour’s decision when it comes to their tournaments.

He said discussions will still have to be held when it comes to the five co-sanctioned tournaments with them like the SA Open. But the Nedbank Golf Challenge, which returns to Sun City in November after a two-year absence due to Covid, is entirely a DP World Tour event, so Sunshine Tour rules do not apply.

“We have agreed a strategic alliance with the DP World Tour, but they must do whatever they see fit in their tournaments,” Abt said.

“But our Sunshine Tour regulations state that a golfer must ask for a release only if there is a conflicting event in the same territory of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands, at the same time.

“So we don’t have any rules to stop our members playing in events overseas, but the Nedbank Golf Challenge is wholly a DP World Tour event,” Abt explained.

The Sunshine Tour itself is in boisterous health with Abt announcing a new points-based order of merit, sponsored by Luno, on Thursday, as well as 35 tournaments next season, the most ever.

“Because there are such big discrepancies in prize funds between tournaments, we have introduced a tier-system for points to give the guys who support our tour through the year a genuine chance of winning the order of merit,” Abt said.

“The bigger events will be worth 12 000 points, but there are lots more tournaments worth 2000 points, so that those golfers who really support the Sunshine Tour can compete for top place.”

The winner of the 2022/23 order of merit will not only gain entry into the U.S. and British Opens and the Nedbank Golf Challenge, but have the use of a Jaguar/Land Rover for a year and win R500 000 of bitcoin from Luno.