Ken Borland

Coach Jake White says the Bulls want to play at a tempo that is so high that the Sharks will battle to match it at altitude in their United Rugby Championship derby at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday.

White went on to accuse the Sharks of wanting to slow the game down so much that they have the lowest ball-in-play time of all their South African opposition. Sharks coach Sean Everitt certainly begs to differ and said altitude and conditioning were not going to trouble his team.

With the coaches crossing swords before the game, the Sharks desperate to bounce back from a draw and a loss, and the Bulls eager to not lose another home game, Saturday’s clash is bound to be a feisty affair.

“I hope the referee [AJ Jacobs] allows us to play a bit quicker,” White said on Friday. “In the last couple of weeks the games have been a bit slow. We want to play quick rugby at altitude.

“It will be very difficult for the Sharks to play at a high tempo at altitude and we want to fatigue them. If altitude was not so important, then most Olympic athletes would go train at sea-level and not at altitude.

“Science has proven the effects of altitude and the Sharks kick a lot, they play very slowly and they have the longest breaks between plays of all our opposition. We would be very happy if it was a quick game.

“We’re striving for 36 minutes ball-in-play and we want to get the tempo going. Hopefully this is the game where everything clicks for us,” White said.

Everitt pointed to the Currie Cup final in January 2021, when they went toe-to-toe with the Bulls before finally succumbing to an extra-time try, as proof of their ability to handle the altitude and tempo.

“Altitude is a mental thing. Twelve months ago we played for 100 minutes up there and it was just one set-piece at the death and our goalkicking that cost us. We should have won in 80 minutes. We don’t talk about altitude anymore,” Everitt said.

But White certainly does not view the Sharks as being easy to beat.

“The Sharks have pushed us the hardest of all the South African teams and they beat us in our last meeting in Durban. So I expect the same, fired-up performance from them.

“They have lots of Springboks, the list goes on and on of their incumbent Springboks. They are still the form team and the strongest on paper. I expect a great challenge.

“They will be playing for all they are worth. It’s going to be like a final because we can’t afford to lose again at home and they also lost last weekend. So I expect the two teams to have a really full go at each other,” White said.

As they prepare to face the Sharks in a vital United Rugby Championship derby at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday, the Bulls’ focus seems to not be so much on the way they play but the speed with which they execute their plans.

Sluggish would be one of the words to describe their grinding 21-13 win over the Lions last weekend, and it is clear coach Jake White has instructed his team to lift their intensity and therefore their pace of play when they take on the Sharks.

“We will take some confidence from the Lions game, but it is clear we still have a lot to learn,” scrumhalf Embrose Papier said. “It was a very slow game and we need to work on our breakdown.

“It’s going to be a tough game and a big physical battle against the Sharks because they are a really good side with a lot of Springboks. But as scrumhalves we have to be really fast. Our forwards do too, they need to set quickly because the Sharks scrumhalves like to snipe as well.

“We have taken quite a few positives out of the Lions game but there’s also been a lot to work on. It was a slow game, but when teams come up to Loftus and the altitude here, we must lift the tempo so we make it hard, especially for teams from the coast,” Papier said.

Apart from injecting more speed into his service from the breakdown, Papier has also been putting plenty of work into his kicking game with consultant Fourie du Preez, the great former Springbok scrumhalf.

“I just played running rugby at Garsfontein school and at U19s and U21s, but I made lots of mistakes and that’s why coaches devise plans. So I play more in the system now and I can still do my own thing in the system.

“I’ve been trying different styles of box-kicks and I now feel comfortable with the way I’m kicking. I need to do the basics right and stay in the system, get the balance right between passing and kicking.

“Fourie is a legend with lots of experience and I am learning a lot with him. We work a lot on passing, kicking and running lines. Fourie was one of the best ever at those and he also had a big work-rate,” Papier said.

Lions coach Ivan van Rooyen listed defence, game-management and his side’s ability to bounce back from a chastening defeat as the qualities he was happiest about in his team’s performance against the Bulls in their United Rugby Championship match at Loftus Versfeld at the weekend.

Although the Lions went down 13-21 to their Gauteng neighbours, it was a markedly improved showing from the previous weekend when they were hammered 34-10 by the same side at Ellis Park. And the Lions could even have won in Pretoria were it not for their failure to execute at lineout time, missed chances on attack and a couple of unfortunate scrum penalties that went against them.

“The defence is probably the area that has grown the most since June,” Van Rooyen said. “It’s been difficult to change our system, but against a big, physical Bulls team, we made it difficult for them, we put them back.

“We thought it would rain and we tried to keep them in their 22. We had much more territorial advantage this game and Tiaan Swanepoel makes a big difference with his big boot. The game-management overall was much better today.

“It was a tough week after the loss at Ellis Park, but the reaction we got from the players today says a lot about the group and how they are growing. We really had the Bulls under pressure for the first 20-25 minutes,” Van Rooyen said.

Captain Jaco Kriel, who had been outspoken in his criticism of the previous weekend’s effort, said there had been a welcome lift in intensity at Loftus Versfeld.

“It was nice to see that reaction to what happened last week and how we stayed together as a group,” Kriel said. “But we can be much more clinical. We were in the right areas but we just didn’t round off.

“We spoke about defence for the whole week and the guys’ shoulders certainly felt it! We created enough opportunities through that, but then just small mistakes let us down.

“We had enough chances to convert that pressure into points, but we just didn’t take them. But there was no question about the effort nor the intensity today,” Kriel said.

As head coach and one of the chief setters of goals for the Bulls, Jake White said he was content with their two successive United Rugby Championship wins over the Lions, although he felt they missed a golden opportunity for another bonus point in their 21-13 win at Loftus Versfeld at the weekend.

After a torrid first quarter, the Bulls look set to repeat their 34-10 triumph at Ellis Park a week ago when they stormed into a 21-6 lead after 49 minutes. But mistakes and a creaking scrum continued to plague their performance and they failed to add to their score as the gutsy Lions fought their way back into the game.

“I said to the players that if I had been offered nine points in two matches against the Lions in two weeks then I would have taken that based on where we were,” White said.

“We had to find a way to jump up the log. But we had enough chances to get the bonus point again, but we just couldn’t score again. Which was not ideal because we had set it up nicely.

“But the rain came when we had gone from 6-0 down to 21-6 up, which meant we went 21-0 in the middle block of the game, so you can’t be too upset, we were doing something right.

“I’m not satisfied that we didn’t get the bonus point, but we also can’t be arrogant. Two weeks ago we were under pressure and now we have nine more points against a Lions side that beat the Stormers in the Cape,” White pointed out.

The former Springbok coach also said that the Lions were adept at using the black arts to further frustrate his side.

“The Lions did a very good job of making the game as scrappy as possible, they were off their feet, not rolling away, hands in. And it worked because they got close to getting the result,” White said.

“But we are going to play games like this again, when the referee’s interpretations are different, and you’ve got to find ways to win when you’re under the pump.

“You’ve got to be good enough to adapt to whatever happens. And so many things happened. We just want consistency, but the same situations are being seen differently. There’s no common sense.

“But we have to be good enough to take the referee out of the equation,” White said.