Ken Borland

Bulls captain Pierre Spies says the players are looking forward to breaking out of their shells a bit in next year’s SuperRugby competition after coach Frans Ludeke indicated this week that a new game plan would revolve around scoring more tries.

“We want to create a more attacking mindset. In many ways the players felt restricted last season, they felt bound to the plan on the table, which never should have been the case, that wasn’t the intention. We want to create an environment for the guys to go out and play and enjoy their rugby,” Spies said at the launch of the Bulls’ new Puma jerseys.

For the Bulls to play more expansively, their conditioning will obviously have to improve and Spies said that was a current focus of the team, who have already started their pre-season training.

“We’re stretching ourselves physically at the moment because this is a vital stage of our preparations, we need to build a fitness base. SuperRugby will be played straight through next year because of the World Cup, there won’t be a break, so we don’t want to be carrying any extra weight that will slow our game down. We want to put some speed on the ball, we want to play a lot more of a running game so we need a lot more running metres on the legs,” Spies said.

The current injury status of the eighthman, who has suffered a wretched last two years in terms of being unavailable, is also looking good for him to start the competition.

“The plan is that I will be available for the first game, but I’m not going to rush things, I don’t want to get re-injured. I’ve started the pre-season training although I do sit out some sessions. I don’t want to do anything to rush the arm, I’ll make sure I’m fully fit,” Spies said.

The question of player management is obviously a crucial one in a World Cup year and Spies, as a Springbok hopeful, acknowledged the difficulties.

“They always speak about player management but then you end up playing every game! But it is a World Cup year, so it doesn’t help sparing yourself. Plus it will take me a few weeks to find my feet again, to get used to the intensity of SuperRugby again.”

Spies is confident that the Bulls squad now has great depth and the inexperienced players who were thrown into the deep end this year now have the belief to perform, especially away from home, which has been their downfall in the past.

“It was a tough year, with a new squad and so many of the games were close. A lot of guys had their first taste of SuperRugby, the pace, conditions and intensity of the competition, and they’ll be much better for that. We have some great youngsters from the U21s who will add depth and hopefully get a run. But we have a good core of seniors and you need that experience to bring calm.

“The internal competition for places raises the standard of training and Trevor Nyakane, Adriaan Strauss and Lappies Labuschagne are all brilliant signings that will have a massive impact,” Spies said.

The Bulls will bring a top-class pack, a backline studded with great young talent and a burning desire to score more tries into next year’s SuperRugby competition, according to coach Frans Ludeke.

A difficult 2013 saw the Bulls finish in ninth place, one win off the playoffs, while their Currie Cup campaign ended in the semi-finals against eventual champions Western Province.

Ludeke said yesterday that a review of the season had provided a clear indication that the Bulls needed to change their game plan.

“Since 2009, the team that has scored the most tries in the competition has won SuperRugby, so we clearly need to have a new shape to our play, we need to score more tries. Bonus points are also crucial in getting you that home semi-final,” Ludeke told The Citizen.

The exciting Handre Pollard will spearhead that effort from flyhalf and the Bulls have plenty of depth in midfield with Jan Serfontein, JJ Engelbrecht, Burger Odendaal (the find of the Currie Cup) and William Small-Smith, and two experienced wings in Akona Ndungane and Bjorn Basson.

Jesse Kriel is an exciting young talent at fullback, where he will be competing with Ulrich Beyers and Jurgen Visser for the number 15 jersey.

Although the emphasis will be on scoring more tries, Ludeke said they will continue to use their traditional strengths of powerful ball-carrying forwards to lay the platform and the coach can call on an all-Springbok pack in Pierre Spies, Arno Botha, Deon Stegmann, Victor Matfield, Flip van der Merwe, Marcel van der Merwe, Adriaan Strauss and Dean Greyling.

SuperRugby places a massive burden on the players, however, so there is a premium on having depth so players can be rotated and the Bulls seem well-placed in this regard with players such as Trevor Nyakane, Bandise Maku, Werner Kruger, Grant Hattingh, Lappies Labuschagne, Jacques du Plessis and Jacques Engelbrecht.

With the ball in play for an average of more than 40 minutes in the last three years of SuperRugby, Ludeke also said he will be focusing on improving the players’ conditioning and skills to deal with the faster-paced game.

The Bulls have come through a difficult period in which they have lost 50 players in five years, but Ludeke believes the new crop of players have begun to settle. They have tremendous potential at Loftus Versfeld and the Bulls have shown glimpses of that in being unbeaten at home in the 2013 SuperRugby competition.

“We have been competitive, but we haven’t been consistent. We won everything at home, but we lost all our away matches,” Ludeke said. “We made too many crucial errors at crucial times. We would dominate possession and play in the right areas, but make a mistake and the opposition would score from 70 metres out.”

To be fair to Ludeke, 2013 was a year in which he had to rebuild the team once again and several inexperienced players were tossed into the furnace. To expect total consistency and error-free rugby from such players is unrealistic in a tournament as demanding as SuperRugby.

But with a more settled squad and a year’s more experience, Ludeke is looking forward to better execution from his players next year.

SuperRugby training squad

Backs:  Jesse Kriel, Duncan Matthews, Warrick Gelant, Jurgen Visser, Akona Ndungane, Travis Ismaiel, Bjorn Basson, Jamba Ulengo, JJ Engelbrecht, William Small-Smith, Dries Swanepoel, Jan Serfontein, Ulrich Beyers, Dan Kriel, Burger Odendaal, Handre Pollard, Jacques-Louis Potgieter, Tian Schoeman, Kobus Marais, Francois Hougaard, Piet van Zyl, Rudy Paige, Ivan van Zyl, Carlo Engelbrecht.

Forwards:  Pierre Spies, Hanro Liebenberg, Arno Botha, Jacques du Plessis, Nardus van der Walt, Nicolaas Janse van Rensburg, Jacques Engelbrecht, Deon Stegmann, Lappies Labuschagne, Roelof Smit, Victor Matfield, Grant Hattingh, Marvin Orie, RG Snyman, Flip van der Merwe, Irne Herbst, Jason Jenkins, Werner Kruger, Marcel van der Merwe, Dayan van der Westhuizen, Hencus van Wyk, Basil Short, Adriaan Strauss, Bandise Maku, Callie Visagie, Jaco Visagie, Arno van Wyk, Dean Greyling, Morne Mellett, Trevor Nyakane, Pierre Schoeman.

To lose four games in a row and then fail to win the fifth when all the hard work had been done is soul-destroying for any team and Unlimited Titans captain Darren Sammy is feeling the pain, according to coach Rob Walter.

The Titans looked set to end their RamSlam T20 Challenge losing streak in the triple-header at Kingsmead at the weekend when they needed just five runs from five balls to beat the Cape Cobras, Qaasim Adams’ scintillating 68 off 36 balls and David Wiese’s 24 not out off seven balls taking them to the brink of a testing target of 170.

But Wiese, having just launched the first ball of Kieron Pollard’s final over for six, then holed out to long-on off the second delivery and Sammy failed to make contact with the next two balls before also being caught at long-on. Roelof van der Merwe then played and missed at the last ball of the match and Pollard had bowled the Cobras to a sensational victory.

“It’s the culmination of those four games prior to the Durban game and to then get so close, it’s hugely disappointing to slip up,” Walter told The Citizen at SuperSport Park yesterday. “What I really like about Darren is that he has a massive sense of personal responsibility for the performance. He’s unhappy that the other West Indians are performing for their teams and he hasn’t. I don’t doubt that he’s giving his best, he really cares, and that’s what’s most important.”

If Wiese could have just hit the final-over low full toss he received from Pollard for six like the previous ball or even along the ground, then the Titans would probably have won the game, but Walter said it was important not to forget how the all-rounder’s heroics had dragged them back into the game in the first place.

“David has had a real impact since coming back from Australia, with the ball in the first match and now with the bat. He almost got us there against the Cobras and in an ideal world he would have hit a full toss for six – and in terms of his future development he must win games like that – but we mustn’t overlook the good stuff from him before that,” the coach said.

The Titans have two games this week –  against the Highveld Lions in Benoni on Friday night and versus the Warriors at SuperSport Park on Sunday afternoon – and Walter said there would not be wholesale changes, although a couple of fresh faces could get a chance to show what they can do now that the pressure of qualifying for the playoffs is gone. The coach is likely to leave Theunis de Bruyn at the top of the order to utilise the powerplay better with his natural strokeplay and Dean Elgar at three to rotate the strike after six overs.

The big positive from the Durban defeat was Adams hitting top form when the game looked lost for the Titans, the 30-year-old left-hander hitting four fours and five sixes as he hammered the Titans back into contention.

“It was great to see the different options Q had – he hit over the covers off the back foot, double-stepped to hit over the covers, hit over long-on and long-off and paddled the ball. It was nice to see that freedom of expression, it highlighted what he’s capable of. It’s also hopefully shown him that he can make a play when we’re in massive trouble, that he can go beyond a small 20 or 30,” Walter said.

The coach said he was also delighted with the good bowling produced by spinners Tabraiz Shamsi and Roelof van der Merwe.

“We’re trying our best to take the emotion out of the results, to look non-emotionally at the stats, the areas that were good and the areas that need more work. If you’re emotional then you overlook the good stuff purely because we lost, but we were one hit away from winning the game,” Walter pointed out.

Restoring Namibian rugby to its former health was the key project for union president Bradley Basson and chief executive Sybrand de Beer in 2014 and their success off the field was mirrored on the park by coach Danie Vermeulen steering the side to World Cup qualification.

On July 6 in the Africa Cup CAR Division 1 qualifier in Antananarivo, Namibia scored an emphatic 89-10 victory over Madagascar to sneak ahead of Zimbabwe and Kenya on points difference and into their fifth successive World Cup, where they will take on the mighty All Blacks as well as Argentina, Tonga and Georgia in Pool C.

Just eight days earlier, Namibia’s campaign looked set to end in tears of sadness as a shock 29-22 defeat at the hands of Kenya left their hopes of qualifying for the 2015 World Cup hanging by the slimmest of threads.

But by 5pm on July 6, the Namibian rugby team were crying tears of joy at the Mahamasina Stadium as their extraordinary victory over the hosts had booked their spot in England 2015.

Following that opening-day loss, just their second against the East Africans since 2006, results had fallen Namibia’s way to keep their hopes alive. The Welwitschias beat Zimbabwe 24-20 to stay in contention, while their fellow Southern Africans did them a favour by overcoming Kenya 28-10 on the final day.

Crucially, neither Zimbabwe nor Kenya managed to get a bonus point in that match, which left Namibia needing to beat Madagascar by 53 points to qualify for the finals of the global showpiece.

“We were down in the dumps up to the last day, but we just believed until the very end. We had the will to keep on fighting until our last breath, until all 15 of us had to be carried off the field if necessary,” flank Tinus du Plessis said after the triumph.

“We had a massive points difference to work on, so we just planned to take it 10 minutes at a time. It’s amazing to think that we’ll now be playing our first match against the All Blacks!” the London Wasps player said.

For Zimbabwe, who showed encouraging improvement through the year, there was a second chance in the form of the repechage, but they went down 15-23 to Russia in Krasnoyarsk.

Director of Rugby Liam Middleton left for Canada shortly thereafter and by mid-November there was yet to be a taker to replace him. But the Sables enjoyed something of a renaissance in 2014, boosted by the presence of former Natal Sharks and Lions SuperRugby flyhalf Guy Cronje.

Kenya will look back on their year with some frustration as they struggled with consistency. They managed to beat Namibia, but lost to Zimbabwe; they lost 14-21 to Uganda, only to beat the same team 34-0 the next weekend.

They will need to develop more consistency – which will come with playing more often – if they are to follow their Sevens team up the world rankings. Under the guidance of former Western Province loose forward Jerome Paarwater, they also competed in the Vodacom Cup, which was a valuable exercise for them.

They will also need to clear their team of doping allegations that were made by a Kenyan governmental task force.

While playing enough internationals is always a challenge for the African sides, Namibia have been able to fill their calendar ahead of the World Cup, playing Germany, Canada, the French Barbarians and Portugal after returning from their Madagascan triumph.

The last three games were on an invaluable year-end tour to Europe, giving the Welwitschia’s the chance to experience Northern Hemisphere conditions ahead of the World Cup and test their depth.

Namibia also hope to be invited to the IRB Nations Cup in Romania as African champions, which could result in another four matches, while home Tests against Zimbabwe and Kenya are also planned for 2015.

The Namibian Rugby Union are also in talks with SARU about their possible participation in the Vodacom Cup in the first half of 2015.

Germany were comfortably beaten, 58-20, in Windhoek, in a match that marked Free State Cheetahs hooker Torsten van Jaarsveld’s first game in Namibian colours.

Vermeulen was able to call on a dozen overseas-based players through the year, with Pumas flank Renaldo Bothma (recently signed by the Sharks) outstanding in the World Cup qualifier in Madagascar, while Jacques Burger, the stoical grafter of the Saracens loose trio, played for Namibia for the first time since September 2011 when he led the team against Canada at Colwyn Bay in northern Wales.

Fullback Chrysander Botha, who played SuperRugby for the Lions and was then signed by the Exeter Chiefs, was one of the stars of the backline before his year ended with a broken leg in the 13-17 loss to Canada.

The likes of flank Rohan Kitshoff and prop Jaco Engels, both stalwarts of the South African domestic scene, also added their experience and quality to the Welwitschias.

The dissent which plagued Namibian rugby around the time of the previous World Cup is now in the past.

“Rugby in Namibia was quite badly hit in 2011 when the exco resigned and technically we were insolvent. But the latest financial statements have been declared clean and passed without any qualifications and there is good governance and the basic foundation in place. We are now back to concentrating on rugby,” De Beer said.

An IRB report also praised Namibian rugby, saying: “Governance, administration and finances can be used as an example for many unions in the world “.

The IRB’s regional manager for Africa, Jean-Luc Barthes, said in his report that “I met responsible and very professional people who want to properly manage their activities and make rugby the number one sport in the country.“

The plaudits kept coming when they were named sports team of the year, Vermeulen won coach of the year and De Beer administrator of the year at the Namibian Sports Commission Annual Awards.

To add to the feel-good factor, the U19 team won the Confederation of African Rugby’s tournament hosted in Windhoek in September to qualify for the IRB Junior Trophy competition in Portugal in 2015.