Ken Borland

Bulls coach Jake White says the Lions team they will meet at Ellis Park on Saturday are a dangerous try-scoring force because of a mix of returning to their old way of playing and the open nature of the Currie Cup this year.

The Lions have climbed to fourth on the log and have scored four tries in four of their seven matches, including 12 tries in their last two games. It has been reminiscent of the triumphant era under former coach Johan Ackermann between 2013 and 2017, when they dominated South African rugby with their expansive style and fluent attacking play.

“Looking at where the Lions are on the log, I have no doubt that they will try and score as many tries as they can. They are the one team who has really troubled us before our last game at Loftus three weeks ago and we struggled in our last match at Ellis Park in May. But as long as we are aware of the challenge, we should be okay.

“I think having guys like Warren Whiteley and Julian Redelinghuys involved in the coaching, the Lions will play like they used to. I am sure they are pushing that style of play because they had massive success with that as players. But the competition itself is also going like that with referees being very strict on certain aspects that create more space.

“That allows teams to have more of a go and the conditions we’re playing in – in the afternoon – it’s like school rugby, at the best time of day. So it’s not only the Lions scoring a lot of tries, ball-in-play time is up to 36-38 minutes and that shows the tempo of the games, the pace and the skill levels. It’s nice for everyone,” White said on Friday.

Nevertheless, White has decided to make nine changes to his starting line-up for the match and is confident he can get full value out of swapping his bench players and his starters from the weekend win over Griquas.

“You always want the best players on the park, but I’m comfortable these guys will bring energy. Hopefully we can use the bench wisely, they are there if we need them, or we can even spare them if the starters have played well enough. We have a nice fresh team which is important because we could have 12 consecutive weeks of play later on.

“We don’t want to get caught short in two months time with injuries and having to select players who have not played enough. I rate all the guys coming in very highly, they are very good rugby players, and you don’t only want to give them a chance when the game is already won. The end of the game is different because there’s more fatigue. We want to grow our depth and confidence,” White said.

Bulls team – 15-David Kriel, 14-Madosh Tambwe, 13-Lionel Mapoe, 12-Harold Vorster, 11-Kurt-Lee Arendse, 10-Chris Smith, 9-Keagan Johannes, 8-WJ Steenkamp, 7-Muller Uys, 6-Arno Botha, 5-Janko Swanepoel, 4-Walt Steenkamp, 3-Jacques van Rooyen, 2-Jan-Hendrik Wessels, 1-Simphiwe Matanzima. Replacements: 16-Schalk Erasmus, 17-Gerhard Steenekamp, 18-Mornay Smith, 19-Ruan Nortje, 20-Elrigh Louw, 21-Zak Burger, 22-Johan Goosen, 23-Stedman Gans.

It is going to be a nervous week for Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber ahead of the first Test against the British and Irish Lions in Cape Town because, as the disappointing performance of the SA A pack against the Bulls showed, if anything more goes amiss with his first-choice line-up then the home side are going to be seriously vulnerable.

Nienaber has claimed that not even he knows when the likes of captain Siya Kolisi, ace flyhalf Handre Pollard and wing Makazole Mapimpi will clear their Covid protocols. The availability of those three players will be his foremost concern this week, but there are other departments that are looking a bit thin at the moment too.

While Kolisi’s absence, alongside that of Duane Vermeulen, leaves Pieter-Steph du Toit to marshal an inexperienced loose trio, the situation at lock is even more concerning. Franco Mostert and Eben Etzebeth are the first-choice pairing and both have been outstanding in the warm-ups. But, with Lood de Jager and RG Snyman not yet fit, their back-ups – Marvin Orie, Nicolaas Janse van Rensburg and Jean-Luc du Preez – have been underwhelming.

Frans Malherbe being Covid-positive has raised questions about the depth at tighthead prop and, while Steven Kitshoff is consistently excellent in the No.1 jersey, who the loosehead prop replacement is going to be is an interesting question with Ox Nche reportedly also being infected with the virus.

There is good news at hooker though with the reported returns to training of Bongi Mbonambi and Scarra Ntubeni meaning Nienaber will not have to field the uncapped Joseph Dweba or Fez Mbatha off the bench.

Elton Jantjies looked in solid form against the Bulls and is an experienced campaigner who can step in for Pollard, while Sbu Nkosi or Aphelele Fassi are both capable stand-ins for Mapimpi. Scrumhalf Cobus Reinach and eighthman Kwagga Smith were the other players who were blameless in the weekend loss, but both were not overly impressed with the quality of performance put up by SA A.

“We had a lot of opportunities that were not taken, instead of being simple we tried something that was not on too often. It’s important to not go out of alignment as a squad, we all have to do our job and we need to put our game-plan on them. There were small individual things that were good, but we did not collectively stamp ourselves on the Bulls,” Reinach said.

“It was an opportunity to get some game-time, which we have not had a lot of, and we knew the Bulls would be desperate, but I think we underestimated how much they wanted to prove a point. We didn’t dominate up front and that’s where the trouble started. We lacked that bit of x-factor and there were a lot of mistakes. We need to sharpen up and get the basics right,” Smith said.

Proteas coach Mark Boucher has acknowledged that the strains of bubble life and the worries of seeing civil unrest back at home have been consumers of energy for his team, but he implored them to make one last push for the final three days of cricket they have in Ireland, starting with the first T20 in Dublin on Monday.

It has generally been a very successful tour of the West Indies and Ireland, with all the series won except for the ODIs against Ireland, which South Africa were forced to share after the first match was rained out and their shock defeat in the second game.

But that historic 43-run loss came at the height of the riots back in South Africa and Boucher said his team had struggled for focus on that day.

“We just weren’t there the other day, the awareness and intensity were way down. But we can’t afford to make excuses, we need to be up for every game. What’s happening back at home is affecting us, and every South African. A lot of adrenaline and energy has gone into chats about it, and that equated to low energy on the field. Plus we’ve been one-and-a-half months on tour.

“We’ve talked a lot to get the emotions out and some of the players have families that have been personally affected, so they feel quite emotionally drained. But we have three days of cricket left and we showed in the last ODI what we can do when we play with good energy. But Ireland will certainly be no walkovers and we found out in the second ODI what happens if we don’t rock up for the T20s,” Boucher said.

With the IPL carnival set to scupper South Africa’s hopes of playing a T20 series against India, the Proteas have these three T20s in the coming week and three more in Sri Lanka to prepare for when the global T20 pageant is held in the United Arab Emirates from October. Assistant coach Enoch Nkwe stressed on Sunday that they now need stable plans.

“We’re not yet where we are supposed to be at, but we will be making sure we give ourselves the best chance of mastering the processes we have in place. We would like to see different personnel in different roles to see how they respond, so those opportunities will be created. We need to look outside the frontline players to see if they can do the job.

“The players need to trust the formula we are working on, no matter the conditions. We only have six games left before the World Cup but we believe we’re on track. We need confidence in our death bowling, where we have clear plans that the bowlers just need to commit to 100%, and we need to get our top-order as stable as possible as soon as possible,” Nkwe said.

Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber admitted that a lack of dominance by the SA A pack in the set-pieces and the gainline battle concerned him after their shock 17-14 defeat at the hands of the Bulls in Cape Town on Saturday.

The Bulls fielded a young pack with only three experienced players in captain and flank Nizaam Carr, prop Jacques van Rooyen and replacement loose forward Arno Botha. But they matched the SA A team blow-for-blow and their lineout dominance was especially damaging to the opposition’s cause.

The Bulls played with great passion and physicality, and Nienaber admitted that they simply wanted to win the match more than his charges. And that is a damning assessment a week away from the first Test.

“Yes, I definitely expected a better performance from the pack, especially better ball from the set-pieces. We didn’t get a proper platform to launch our attacks from. The Bulls are the best franchise in South Africa and hats off to them. Obviously their desperation levels were through the roof. The first fingers point at myself and management because we obviously did things wrong in the build-up.

“Sad to say, but the Bulls were more desperate than us. And that’s even though there are places up for grabs in the Test team, but you can’t take a lot of positives from a performance like that, except that we got game time into a lot of guys who needed it. I’m quite emotional after a performance like that, as a team the performance was just not there,” Nienaber admitted after the game.

The Springbok coach did not want to discuss individual performances, but suffice to say he probably thinks his gran could have played with more intensity and fire than some of the SA A team.

“Any comments I make about individuals will be emotional. Maybe some individuals did well, but it did not come out as a team. But we got a lot of answers over certain players, we needed questions asked of them under pressure. Which is exactly what we wanted, but not the loss, that’s not what we hoped for,” Nienaber said.

Scrumhalf Cobus Reinach, eighthman Kwagga Smith, fullack Aphelele Fassi and solid flyhalf Elton Jantjies were probably the only players to have advanced their Springbok cause.