Ken Borland

Following their impressive victory over the Sharks in their United Rugby Championship derby at the weekend, the Bulls house is in order and the campaign is back on track, coach Jake White says.

The 40-27, bonus point win over the Sharks at Loftus Versfeld was the Bulls’ second in a row after a couple of defeats on tour, and it lifted them back into third place on the log.

“It’s a tough competition and we’ve toured and had a couple of injury problems, but we’ve done well the last couple of weeks,” White said. “The campaign is back on track.

“We’ve played seven games, we’ve got five wins, scored lots of tries, got a handful of bonus points and we’re third on the log. That’s fantastic for us, one-third of the way into the competition.

“And there’s no reason we can’t get better, with 14 games left until the final. Hopefully it’s a well-timed break for the players now, and we come back on November 9.

“Then we’ll switch on for two home games and wait and see who we get back from the national squads,” White said.

The coach did admit to some frustration at the Bulls’ performance against the Sharks, however, with the home side sometimes their own worst enemy.

“At times we shot ourselves in the foot. We couldn’t get out of our half and we had two kicks direct into touch. We were outstanding in the first 20 minutes but just didn’t finish,” White said.

“We knocked on in their 22 twice and chose the wrong lineout play once. We should have stayed with the maul, they had two warnings, but we moved away from the maul when the Sharks probably would’ve got a card.

“So there are a lot of things still to look at, we let them score three tries after all. We can’t give teams those soft moments like we did just before halftime.

“We practised defending against that Aphelele Fassi move the whole week, but he scored anyway because we get narrow.

“But when they led 17-16, no-one was thinking about a bonus point win, so there is a lot of excitement and energy in the changeroom. Now it’s time to recharge and it will be nice to have that same energy when we come back from the break,” White said.

A divided house will never stand and Proteas batsman Rassie van der Dussen said on Thursday that the determination and fight the team has shown in both their T20 World Cup matches thus far has proven the unity and dedication to their task within the team.

South Africa made a disastrous start to the tournament by losing three wickets in the first 25 balls of their match against Australia, but almost defended their mediocre total of 118-9 with a superb display in the field.

Before their second game against the West Indies, they were rocked by the CSA Board’s directive for them to take the knee in support of BLM and Quinton de Kock’s subsequent withdrawal from the match when they arrived at the ground. After a torrid first 10 overs, they fought to restrict the West Indies to 143-8, a total they chased down with aplomb.

“It was a big day for us with everything that had transpired before,” Van der Dussen said on Thursday. “We knew we had to get the win but the West Indies are always a massive threat especially when they also lost their first game.

“I was really proud of how the team stood up, proud of the spirit, we showed what we can do and that there’s real resilience and character in the team.

“The enormity of the occasion did not escape us and what happened almost made the result even more important. We wanted to make people proud and left everything on the field.

“We showed our tenacity, where our minds are at, and after a bad first half of the innings, we never threw in the towel. We had to dig deep and I’m proud of how we responded to all the things thrown at us,” Van der Dussen said.

Playing Sri Lanka in Sharjah on Saturday will be the biggest trial by spin the Proteas have faced up till now in the tournament, but Van der Dussen said they have trained for the occasion for more than a year now.

“Sharjah will probably suit Sri Lanka more than us, but we have shown that we have really improved in foreign conditions. The coaching staff started more than a year ago to put a lot of emphasis on upskilling us in conditions we didn’t grow up in.

“The way we approach spin has improved a lot. We have confidence because we know now we have the skill and the experience of winning matches in conditions like that,” Van der Dussen said.