Ken Borland

Anyone who watches Griquas play rugby knows that they are a side that may be a little rough around the edges but they go all-in with everything they do, and their high-flying third position on the Currie Cup log is the reward for their determination. Bulls coach Jake White certainly knows how difficult they are to tame even though he will be fielding a rejigged outfit against them at Loftus Versfeld on Wednesday afternoon.

Centre Lionel Mapoe, wing Kurt-Lee Arendse, flank Arno Botha and prop Gerhard Steenekamp all return to the starting line-up, while tighthead Jacques van Rooyen and the highly-rated utility forward Jacques du Plessis, who has returned to Pretoria from Montpellier, are on the bench.

“We’ve picked a strong team with a couple of guys coming back from injury, because Griquas are not easy to play against. Griquas are really enjoying their season, they’ve done phenomenally well and have had big wins away from home. Every contest on the field they go in with 100% commitment. They have good players who are playing well. My first game coaching the Bulls was against Griquas here at Loftus Versfeld and we were 10-0 down very quickly,” White said on Tuesday.

Both the Bulls and Griquas are coming off defeats last weekend, but the defending Currie Cup champions were probably more annoyed by the way they were ripped apart amidships by the Sharks in the third quarter, when they went from being 20-13 up to trailing 32-20.

“If you’re not on top of your game then you can be on the receiving end, that’s the fantastic thing about sport. If you’re not winning you’re learning, so that will be a learning curve for us. We need to understand pressure cycles better, we managed to build pressure but we didn’t seem to understand that we had the opposition by the throat. But you only learn to understand those things on the field,” White said.

Bulls team – David Kriel, Cornal Hendricks, Lionel Mapoe, Harold Vorster, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Johan Goosen, Zak Burger, Elrigh Louw, Arno Botha, Marcell Coetzee, Ruan Nortje, Walt Steenkamp, Mornay Smith, Schalk Erasmus, Gerhard Steenekamp. Bench:Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Simphiwe Matanzima, Jacques van Rooyen, Janko Swanepoel, Jacques du Plessis, Keagan Johannes, Chris Smith, Stedman Gans.

Springbok captain Siya Kolisi on Friday pronounced himself 100% ready to give everything and inspire his team to do the same in the first Test against the British and Irish Lions in Cape Town on Saturday.

Kolisi played in the Test against Georgia but then missed the two SA A games due to a brush with Covid, and questions have been asked in some, largely foreign, quarters over his readiness for what will certainly be an all-out game of Test rugby.

“I’ve had a good build-up. Obviously it was tough testing positive and going through isolation and everything, but I was involved in every meeting and looking at the team’s preparation. And then I felt really good when I went back to training because fortunately I did not have any Covid symptoms. I was fine by the second day and after that it was all just mental being isolated in my room.

“The coaches know if I get tired, they are very good at noticing that and making substitutions a the right time, and they will definitely take me off. But I know what our bench can do, we have depth and they will turn it up even more, so I won’t be holding back, I am going to give it my absolute all on the field. My focus is just on the stuff I can control and I have a very big job on the field,” Kolisi said on Friday.

Particularly in the northern hemisphere, there have been whispers that the Springboks’ World Cup triumph was somehow a fluke and they should not be considered the best team in the world anymore. The 2007 World Cup champion Springboks were extremely motivated to beat the Lions in 2009 just to counter any such suggestions themselves and Kolisi hinted that his outfit are using similar fuel to fire them up.

“I spoke to John Smit last night and we have the same mindset as the 2007 side. We have come through many challenges, guys have been out for a long time with injuries and we have worked hard to get here. It’s rare to get this opportunity to play against the Lions again, most of us won’t. So we really want to win and we will give everything for that result.

“It’s going to be all about whose plan comes out on top and our plan hasn’t changed at all. It’s going to be about who is able to adapt and enforce their game-plan for 80 minutes. Our fitness levels and plans are there. We are also in a place of privilege to put smiles on peoples’ faces when unfortunately the country is not doing well, and that drives us even more,” Kolisi said.

An unprecedented 21 players will make their Currie Cup debut for the Bulls on Saturday as they take on Western Province at Loftus Versfeld in the opening round, but stand-in coach Pine Pienaar believes his rookies will give absolutely everything as they get to play in a North/South derby that would have been beyond their immediate dreams.

Nine of those players are not even in the Bulls structures and have had to be called in from club rugby. The extraordinary selection – for surely one of the most important games of the Currie Cup – has been forced on the Bulls because they have 28 players in Italy for the Rainbow Cup final, four are with the Springboks, four are unavailable due to injury, two are on duty with the Blitzboks and six have been called up by the Junior Springboks.

But there are still a couple of familiar faces in the team as highly-rated loosehead prop Simphiwe Matanzima will finally make his return after 10 months out with a torn achilles tendon and Richard Kriel, younger brother of David, will want to show what he can do at fullback. And TV viewers will get the eye-popping experience of seeing gigantic prop Mhleli Dlamini in the flesh when he comes off the bench.

“We see it as a reward for the guys at the clubs, in Varsity Cup or in our juniors who have done well. It’s going to be an unbelievable privilege for them to play in a North/South Currie Cup derby, everyone is looking forward to the challenge and that’s what we’ve spoken about with them. After we had a session just to get to know each other …

“These guys never thought in their wildest dreams that they would be playing for the Bulls now. We’ve prepared as best we can from last week and there’s an unbelievable atmosphere in the team because they all want to create an impression and express themselves. The one definite is that they will put in a massive effort and we’ll stay in the fight for as long as we can,” Pienaar said on Thursday.

Despite the difficulties involved in getting a team drawn from so many different parts to gel together, Pienaar says the Bulls will have a holistic game-plan against Western Province.

“I think we have a good combination between forwards and backs and we will try to attack space with ball-in-hand. There will be a lot of mistakes, but we won’t be looking at the scoreboard, it’s about getting our processes right and the guys will definitely go out and give it their all,” Pienaar said.

Bulls: Richard Kriel, Sebastiaan Jobb, Sango Xamlashe (Captain), Louritz van der Schyff, Kefentse Mahlo, Jandre Burger, Johan Mulder, Jaco Bezuidenhout, Jaco Labuschagne, Henco Beukes, Tiaan de Klerk, JJ Scheepers, Francois Klopper, Werner Fourie, Simphiwe Matanzima. Bench -Llewelyn Classen, Dewald Donald, Mhleli Dlamini, Adolph Visser, Eduan Lubbe, Tiaan Fourie, Kabelo Mokoena, Niel Beukes.

Everything went wrong for South Africa’s men’s side in a nightmare first half in which they conceded seven goals, before they regrouped and eventually lost 9-1 to Belgium in their Hockey World League match at the Wits Astro on Monday night.

While South Africa were undeniably poor, flatfooted and always half-a-yard off the pace of the game, credit must also go to Belgium for a dazzling first half in which everything they touched turned to gold, thanks to some ruthless finishing.

The home side, except for 18-year-old Dayaan Cassiem, waging a lone battle as he ran impressively up front, showed little of the fight that had characterised their women’s side in their memorable win over the USA the night before.

The first 20 minutes were bad enough for South Africa as they found themselves 3-0 down, Belgium scoring through an Alexander Hendrickx short-corner goal, Nicolas de Kerpel one-timing a loose ball into the roof of the net for a wonder-goal, and then captain Thomas Briels scrambling in the third.

Except it would get worse as Belgium then piled on four goals in the last five minutes of the first half. Simon Gougnard was allowed to waltz along the baseline before passing to a totally unmarked Briels to score the fourth; Sebastien Dockier also just ran away from his marker to get a good pass from Gauthier Boccard and slam a reverse-sticks rocket in; and Loick Luypaert’s fluffed short-corner drag-flick then somehow eluded goalkeeper Rassie Pieterse and post-man Tim Drummond; before Cedric Charlier, the driver of much of Belgium’s attacking play, got on the end of an overhead from Augustin Meurmans, showed good skill dribbling into the circle and then shot home between the goalkeeper’s legs.

South Africa coach Fabian Gregory said the mentality of the shellshocked team for the second half was just to make it a contest, which they succeeded in doing.

“In the first half we made unforced errors, our basic skills were non-existent and we could not keep the ball, and you cannot do that against a world-class team like Belgium, they punished us every time, but I was disappointed by some of the soft goals we let in.

“The second half was the type of hockey I expect from the team after a really disappointing first half. It was about how much we could compete, we said we were starting again at 0-0 and we will try and salvage something from the game,” Gregory said afterwards.

The second half did not start well for the hosts though as Jethro Eustice made a good tackle in the circle but the ball went back towards his own goal, and Matthew Guise-Brown slipped in trying to clear it and Dockier was presented with an easy goal.

But South Africa were on the scoreboard two minutes later as Guise-Brown fired a superb short-corner drag-flick into the top-right corner and they had a handful of other good chances in the second half.

It was Belgium who would have the final say, however, as more soft defending by South Africa in the 59^th minute saw them just stand off and allow Boccard to run into the circle and fire the ball into goal past Richard Curtis, who replaced Pieterse for the second half and impressed.

Gregory said he was particularly unhappy that his team did not stick to the strategy that had been decided beforehand.

“If I’m brutally honest, the team did not execute tactically what we asked for, the application of that strategy was terrible and that’s why we did not cope well with the Belgian press.”

South Africa will now play a promotion/relegation game against Japan on Friday and will be desperate to stay up in the elite Hockey World League.

Germany, Belgium, Ireland and Egypt will go through to the quarterfinals from Pool B, to play France, New Zealand, Spain and Australia respectively.

Results: Germany 2 (Tom Grambusch, Martin Zwicker) Ireland 0; Australia 7 (Mark Knowles, Jake Whetton 2, Dylan Wotherspoon, Aran Zalewski, Tom Wickham, Jeremy Hayward) Japan 2 (Shota Yamada, Hirotaka Zendana); Spain 4 (Josep Romeu, Enrique Gonzalez, Alvaro Iglesias, Pau Quemada) New Zealand 3 (Shea McAleese, Nic Woods, Kane Russell); Belgium 9 (Alexander Hendrickx, Nicolas de Kerpel, Thomas Briels 2, Sebastien Dockier 2, Loick Luypaert, Cedric Charlier, Gauthier Boccard) South Africa 1 (Matthew Guise-Brown).

Tuesday’s fixtures (women’s quarterfinals): 11.15 USA v Japan; 1.30 Argentina v Ireland; 3.45 England v India; 6pm Germany v South Africa.