Ken Borland

There is no doubt the Bulls players and management crave the sort of pedigree and success in European rugby that Leinster enjoy, and coach Jake White is hoping upsetting the Irish giants in their United Rugby Championship semi-final in Dublin on Friday is the first step on that path.

Leinster have won the European Champions Cup four times, second only to Toulouse (5), and the Pro14 competition (the URC’s predecessor) eight times including the last four tournaments in a row. They also topped the final URC log by six points.

But while it’s obvious how much White respects Leinster, it’s also one of the great joys of sport that hot favourites are sometimes upset by the underdogs in knockout matches. It’s those games the fans live for, and the former World Cup winning coach is hoping Friday night is one of those days for the Bulls.

“Leinster are an incredible team, to put it in perspective, Sean Cronin, their reserve hooker, has played 206 games for them and Jonny Sexton has played 183. Together they have probably played more matches than our entire squad and they are both on the bench.

“We all want to become like Leinster in terms of our structures and we have massive respect for them. Who else has players like Cronin, Sexton, Cian Healy and Ciaran Frawley on the bench?

“Leinster used 60 players in this season’s URC, which is 16 more than us. Those learnings mean you will be so much better next year and after that. For us it’s about building a team over the next couple of years so we can be one of the strongest clubs in world rugby.

“But people follow sport because there’s always a chance, the players believe they can do it and I want them to give it a real crack. We’ve got confidence that on our day we can win,” White said.

For the upset to happen though, it’s going to be crucial for the Bulls to absorb the early blows Leinster, at their formidable RDS Arena, are going to rain down on them.

“We have to start well, Leinster score most of their points in the first 25 minutes,” White said. “It’s very difficult to play catch-up against them, especially at their home ground.

“La Rochelle stayed in the game well in the Champions Cup final a fortnight ago, but the last time we were here, we looked again and we were 15 points down.

“But it will be different this time because we won’t be overawed, we are more controlled now and we have more settled combinations.”

Having bished-and-bashed their way into the last four, there is no pressure on the Bulls, and whatever they get out of Friday night’s game will be a bonus.

“I think we have surpassed everything we were meant to do already,” White said after naming an unchanged starting XV on Thursday. “Now we see if we can live with the best standard of European clubs.”

Bulls: Canan Moodie, David Kriel, Cornal Hendricks, Harold Vorster, Madosh Tambwe, Chris Smith, Zak Burger; Elrigh Louw, Arno Botha, Marcell Coetzee, Ruan Nortje, Walt Steenkamp, Mornay Smith, Johan Grobbelaar, Gerhard Steenekamp. Replacements -Bismarck du Plessis, Simphiwe Matanzima, Robert Hunt, Janko Swanepoel, WJ Steenkamp; Embrose Papier, Morne Steyn, Kurt-Lee Arendse.

Having staged a stirring comeback to level the scores at 27-27, the Sharks were meant to keep possession and force a penalty in the final stages of their nailbiting United Rugby Championship quarterfinal against the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld, coach Sean Everitt said.

They were also meant to avoid giving the Bulls the ball in their own 22. Sadly for the Sharks, they failed to do both things and the Bulls snatched victory with an 84^th-minute drop goal.

“The team is hurting and extremely disappointed,” a gutted Everitt said. “But I am proud of their effort and character. There were just a couple of soft moments, which were disappointing.

“At the end the result could have gone either way and we could have had a bit more fortune in the last five minutes. The plan was to hold on to the ball, put them under pressure and try to earn a penalty.

“We believed we could win, we showed tremendous character and never gave up. But our execution just needed to be a bit better. Things like that last pass just not going to hand.

“And we spoke about discipline and not giving the Bulls the ball in our 22, which is exactly what we did. They are clinical there and they have the best completion rate inside the 22 in the competition,” Everitt said.

The coach said he believes that if he mends a couple of things before next season, the Sharks can go all the way in 2022/23.

“If you look at where we have improved, the set-piece has come on a lot. But our balance on the field has improved too – now we can use our set-piece and we can score tries.

“We put ourselves in position to score tries today and there is no question about the character, culture or team environment because they showed their pride today.

“We just need to fix the rugby side and we especially need to work on the attacking breakdown. We gave the Bulls field position from there, it was a problem against Ulster and in our two previous games against the Bulls,” Everitt said.

By scoring twice in the final quarter to come back from 13-27 down, the Sharks showed their attack is plenty dangerous when it clicks. Phepsi Buthelezi is developing into a top-class ball-in-hand eighthman to provide the link to a backline in which wing Makazole Mapimpi was a threat throughout.

People should not run pell-mell to the conclusion that this is a poorly-coached Sharks team.

“I suppose if you look at Springboks and World Cup winners then we do have a lot of them and they can be proud of their effort. We played some really good rugby.

“I actually enjoyed watching the game even though my blood pressure was probably through the roof. We got the ball through the hands on a couple of occasions and looked really dangerous.

“Under-performance is a broad topic and rugby has a lot of variables. At times we’ve not played as well as we would have liked, and there are certain aspects of our game that need to be worked on.

“Obviously there are things to improve, and they are all fixable. The team has done exceptionally well and they want to play for the jersey,” Everitt said.

With the Sharks dominating the final quarter and the Bulls’ chances on the wane, coach Jake White had much on his mind in the last 10 minutes of the gripping United Rugby Championship quarterfinal at Loftus Versfeld at the weekend.

While the 58-year-old coach admitted that the tense finish had aged him, he too found it a thrilling spectacle. He had considered bringing on finisher supreme Morne Steyn, but with the scores locked at 27-27 and the final hooter having blown, that horse had bolted. But then it was starting flyhalf Chris Smith who kicked an 84^th-minute drop goal to put the Bulls into the semi-finals.

Much like his team, White said he still believed they would win, although the drop goal was an unexpected conclusion.

“I didn’t think for one moment about a drop goal, I thought they’d score a try, like Cornal Hendricks did earlier,” White said after the game. “The players had the belief and the desire to keep working.

“All credit to them for summing up the situation, although Chris said to me afterwards that he was terrified. But he’s not the first Northern Transvaal flyhalf to kick a matchwinning drop goal.

“In the first half, Chris had tried a crosskick in our own 22, which just shows that sometimes you make good decisions and sometimes you don’t. I was actually thinking of bringing Morne on, but as it turned out I kept the right guy on the field.

“The game changed five times in the last nine minutes, and I’m sure both coaches’ boxes thought they deserved penalties. But it was a fantastic game of rugby, that’s why people come watch rugby,” White said.

Typical of a knockout derby match, the quarterfinal between the sides that finished fourth and fifth on the final URC log saw both teams endure up-and-down fortunes. The Bulls had to weather a poor start and a storming finish by the Sharks; and the visitors had to fight back from conceding two tries in the first 10 minutes of the second half to fall 13-27 behind.

“We did not start well and gave the Sharks 10 points through our own mistakes,” White said. “I looked at the scoreboard clock and it said nine-and-a-half minutes and we hadn’t had the ball yet.

“Hopefully when we are more experienced we will understand the importance of holding on to the ball and not giving it away so easily.

“After the first half, I told the team we hadn’t played, we were hardly in the Sharks half and we hardly had the ball. I told them to make sure we start playing, and when we did, we looked outstanding at times.

“But I always knew it was going to be tough. The Sharks have nine Springboks in their starting line-up, five World Cup winners, so it was always going to go to the wire. It was about little moments, for them as well, but you have to win those,” White said.

Coach Jake White is delighted that most people seem to consider the Bulls the favourites for their United Rugby Championship match against the Sharks on Saturday, despite the KwaZulu-Natalians beating them twice this season, and said “my analogy to the players was that they are like a golfer who has a chance to win in the final round”.

The Bulls get to host the South African derby quarterfinal because they finished fourth on the final URC log, one place above the Sharks, and White really wants his players to feel at home in the pressure of a knockout game.

“I’m very proud we’re the favourites,” White said. “We’ve finished ahead of them on the log even though we lost to them twice and they have eight current Springboks and we have zero incumbents. It’s a feather in our cap for all our coaches and players.

“We’re really excited, there’s a buzz around Loftus like the old days. We will stick to what has been working for us and won’t be influenced by other people. My players have been given full carte blanche to express themselves.

“They’re like a runner coming down the last stretch now. I gave them a golf analogy and told them the pressure to make the cut on a Friday is very different to playing in the final round when you have a chance to win.

“I want them to enjoy it and give it a full go, and hopefully we can do our supporters proud. We’ve got a couple of new things we will bring to the Sharks and it will be interesting to see if it works …,” White smiled.

The Bulls lost 29-22 to the Sharks in their last meeting in Pretoria, in February, but much went wrong that day which White is confident won’t happen again.

“We made a couple of mistakes then – we had to play with 14 men, a kick-off bounced straight into Makazole Mapimpi’s hands and Lukhanyo Am scored a long-range intercept try.

“I’m fully confident going into this match and we have played well in knockout games,” White said.

The only thing White seemed to be unhappy about on Friday was an injury list that curls his toes. To the long-term blows that have ruled out Lionel Mapoe, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Johan Goosen, Jacques du Plessis and Jacques van Rooyen can now be added  the snapped hamstring suffered by bruising loose forward Cyle Brink.

Arno Botha is a fine replacement in the starting line-up and exciting youngster Reinhardt Ludwig will be on the bench.

Bulls: Canan Moodie, David Kriel, Cornal Hendricks, Harold Vorster, Madosh Tambwe, Chris Smith, Zak Burger; Elrigh Louw, Arno Botha, Marcell Coetzee (CAPT), Ruan Nortje, Walt Steenkamp, Mornay Smith, Johan Grobbelaar, Gerhard Steenekamp. Replacements – Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Lizo Gqoboka, Robert Hunt, Janko Swanepoel, Reinhardt Ludwig; Embrose Papier, Morne Steyn, Stedman Gans.