Ken Borland

Nizaam Carr is a Springbok loose forward who hasn’t had much game time since joining the Bulls, but he said on Tuesday that working with coach Jake White has been one of the best relationships of his career and the desire at Loftus Versfeld is strong to avoid what the player called “the same fate as Liverpool”.

With the talismanic Duane Vermeulen currently unavailable after minor knee surgery, Carr could well get his chance to shine in the preparation series that starts this weekend, with the Bulls taking on Eastern Province in Pretoria on Sunday. The former Stormers and Wasps star said the message from White has been clear: Even though several of the stars who won both SuperRugby Unlocked and the Currie Cup might not be playing, the Bulls are looking to improve their game still further.

“The message from Jake was that we have to take it to the next level, whether that’s in our diet, our training, our gym or whatever. What happened to Liverpool, what my friends have been telling me about them because I’m not a big football fan … we don’t want to suffer the same fate. So we need to do something different to stay on top, we need to take our game up a notch.

“This series is the perfect opportunity for us to prepare and you can see everyone want this opportunity. I always back myself to start but I will do whatever I can to help the team, like I had to do for the Currie Cup final. But I have a good understanding with Jake and the other coaches, in fact my relationship with Jake is one of the best I’ve experienced with a coach. It’s been fantastic to continue my journey with these fantastic people,” Carr said on Tuesday.

Carr is probably competing with former Springbok Sevens star Tim Agaba for the eighthman berth vacated by Vermeulen. While Agaba will bring work-rate and physicality to the role, Carr said he sees his strength as being the more classical ability to link with the backs.

“I want to play eighthman, I feel I am best there, but it is nice that I can cover a lot of options and different coaches want different things from their eighthman. My strength is linking, mixing it up with the forwards and backs, doing the dirty work if necessary and bringing a high tackle count. I’m also a lineout option although I’m not the biggest guy.

“I’m not one of those 120kg or 1.95 metres guys, but I bring something else to the party. I have not played as much as I would have liked here, so it feels like my first game again, something I am really looking forward to. It’s a big opportunity, that’s the motivator for all of us, we want to showcase what we’ve got, show that we can turn up at this level, given the opportunity,” Carr said.

 

The Lions’ victory over the Waratahs was a fantastic achievement and one of the best results in the history of our SuperRugby, you have to give credit to the players and the whole coaching staff for pulling off that sort of scoreline in Sydney – and for keeping the New South Welshmen pointless for the first time ever in the competition.

The Lions were really dominant in the scrums and lineouts and they scored some very clever tries. But I would like to single out defence coach Joey Mongalo as their unsung hero.

He took over from JP Ferreira and was under lots of pressure when they started to concede tries in the losses against the Blues, in Argentina and versus the Crusaders, so it is a real credit to him that they have tightened up so much since then. Swys de Bruin took a big punt in appointing his son, Neil, as the skills coach and then he took Joey out of the junior team, where he had been tremendously successful.

It’s a big step up for Mongalo but he can now enjoy the history made in Sydney. He has persevered through the ups and downs and been at the Lions for seven years and was promoted to the Currie Cup last year. He was also the SA U20 defence coach under Dawie Theron and in their last year they finished fourth at the junior world cup. Saru, in their infinite wisdom, decided not to make use of him last year, but he is a quality young coach.

The difference he has made to the Lions’ defence is that they now have great spacing, alignment and width, they really cover the width of the field. They are also very strong in the collisions, guys like Franco Mostert, Harold Vorster and Malcolm Marx really monster guys. They have a great double-hit system which means the ball-carrier can’t get the offload away.

They’ve also shown greater line-speed these last two weeks, they’re coming forward and really laying down the gauntlet to the opposition. With that they can force turnovers through Kwagga Smith and Marx, who is probably the best in the world right now at forcing turnovers. He gets over the ball so often and he is really hard to shift.

The fact that he comes off the lineout and is inside the ball a lot of the time allows him to be very effective at turnovers. The hooker role has changed over the last few years because of the nature of how teams contest for possession and one of the best at stealing ball I ever worked with was Bismarck du Plessis. The hooker nowadays basically defends the inside channel, which enables him to be close to his target.

The other impressive feature of the Lions’ play against the Waratahs was the quality of their kicking game and their lack of fear in doing it anywhere on the field. Elton Jantjies was even prepared to put in a crossfield kick off turnover ball five metres from the goal-line. There was also a great little chip from scrumhalf Dillon Smit in the middle of the field that bounced into Ruan Combrinck’s hands and Kwagga scored.

They have the courage to do it when it’s not expected and they execute those kicks so well. The Lions also have very good chasing wings.

Swys de Bruin obviously gives them the confidence to try anything anywhere on the field and you can never accuse him of taking the safe option. He’s also had his ups and downs as a coach – he spent a long time at the Sharks Academy before Johan Ackermann brought him back into the coaching fold. He brings confidence and a sense of adventure to Lions rugby.

One must also give credit to forwards coach Philip Lemmer. Those two tries from drives off the lineout were really well executed and the way they shifted and created a channel for Marnus Schoeman, ripping a wide open gap for him to go through, was very clever.

So it was almost the perfect performance away from home by the Lions, I expect them to back it up by beating the Reds this weekend, and it is a smart move by Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus to add Swys to the consulting team for the England series. Does it mean the Springboks will play with that same freedom as the Lions do?

Well Rassie is naturally quite a conservative coach so it will be interesting to see if Swys will free up the backs.

Elton Jantjies is now the most capped Lions player ever, having gone past Cobus Grobbelaar’s 94 appearances earlier this season, and he is hardly ever injured, so he is tremendously resilient and looks after his body well. The Lions’ style of play is tailor-made to his strengths and it was encouraging to see him dictate matters in an away game, having shown previously he’s obviously very good at altitude. A lot of it comes down to the backing Swys de Bruin gives him and the question is whether he will now get the same with the Springboks.

I thought the Bulls were good value for their win over the Rebels. Sometimes you have to win ugly but to bank the five points despite that was excellent and coach John Mitchell won’t mind doing that every week.

Adriaan Strauss is certainly in brilliant form, last year’s break did him good and he has dropped some weight. In fact, I have worked with Atta since the U21s and this is the fittest I have ever seen him. He has always been a world-class player, but in the environment Mitchell has created at Loftus Versfeld, he is really performing. Having him there really adds accuracy to the set-pieces and he almost always hits his jumpers with his dead-eye-dick throws.

That brings RG Snyman and Lood de Jager into play and that forms the axis of the Bulls side with flyhalf Handre Pollard.

Under the new regime, Lood is also fitter and more mobile and the offloads and supporting lines of the Bulls forwards are very good, they look to keep the ball alive in space. Their scrum also functioned quite well against the Rebels and they created a great angle on the crucial try scored by Divan Rossouw just before halftime. They took a whole lot of Rebels defenders out of the game, they could not get across in time and the visitors basically ran out of tacklers.

Pollard is also providing direction with the boot and is enjoying a good string of matches, plus you have the magic and game-breaking ability of Jesse Kriel and Warrick Gelant, who has such incredible feet, he could get his way out of a phone box full of tacklers!

In fact there are now a lot of players with good feet on display in South African rugby, there’s that stepping ability. New Zealand’s guys tend to rely on their size, but we’re starting to produce it on the wings, guys who are really quick with good feet and are good in the air, which is going to be crucial in the Rugby Championship and against England.

The Rebels’ tactics are well-known on the Highveld, trying to slow down or stop the game, which gives their forwards longer time to recover. Visiting teams to Pretoria either stack their bench with forwards in a 6/2 split, so for the last 20 minutes they almost have a fresh pack on, or they slow the game down, sit down often and make the whole pace slower.

But hopefully the Bulls will also be able to turn over the Highlanders on the Highveld this weekend.

The Sharks versus Stormers game was obviously between two teams desperate for a win and the loss puts real heaps of pressure now on the Stormers. They’ll have to win with bonus points in their next five games in the Cape, which is possible. But for the Stormers to win with bonus points they need to be far more defensively secure than they have been.

But I look forward to watching the games in my 11^th floor Tokyo flat, which overlooks the Springbok training facility for next year’s World Cup. I hope I am still here next year to look out my window and watch them train!

 

 

 

John McFarland won three SuperRugby titles (2007, 09, 10) with the Bulls and five Currie Cup crowns with the Blue Bulls as their defence coach. In all, he won 28 trophies during his 12 years at Loftus Versfeld.

He is currently the assistant coach of the Kubota Spears in Japan and was the Springbok defence coach from 2012 through to the 2015 World Cup, where they conceded the least line-breaks in the tournament and an average of just one try per game.

 

Ndumo Game Reserve is known as one of the best bird-spotting places in the country, but most of the twitching efforts are concentrated around the sand, fig and riverine forests.

The south-western portion of the park is under-rated Acacia woodland and my latest trip to this Zululand gem produced a sighting that will live long in the memory as one of the most amazing things I’ve seen.

Gorgeous Bush Shrike generally sticks to dense cover and normally only offers a sneak-peek to the many who seek this quite dazzling, aptly-named bird.

It is one of Ndumo’s characteristic birds though, even if the beautiful, ringing “kong-kong-kowit” call is heard far more often than the bird is actually seen.

I had enjoyed an excellent sighting earlier in the day along the southern boundary fence of the park when I heard one calling next to the road. I was expecting to be looking for a bird skulking, as usual, low down in the bush and it took me a while to realise that the member of the pair that was actually calling was sitting out in the open!

But that sighting paled in comparison to what happened later, further down that road in the Paphukulu section as the sand forest thicket starts to open up into more open woodland.

I came across four Gorgeous Bush Shrike, calling and displaying, lifting their heads to expose their bright red throats, and I was able to follow them for a few hundred metres as they continued through the bushes on the side of the road!

This thorny woodland provides handy perches for birds via the boundary fence and the cattle farm outside offers different habitat to the bushveld inside the park, leading to plenty of sightings.

Steppe Buzzard is more a bird of the open habitats outside the park, but seeing as though their migration pattern follows mountains like the nearby Lebombos and this was late October, maybe the one grooming itself on a fence post was just taking a breather from its long journey.

Little Bee-Eater was also on the boundary fence and there were three Redbilled Oxpecker on a telephone pole.

Another migrant raptor, the Yellowbilled Kite, flew over and seemed to be eating something on the wing, while another skulker, the Sombre Bulbul, was kindly calling from the top of a tree for an easy tick.

A Sabota Lark was being unkindly bullied by a Rattling Cisticola (two typical bushveld species), while a group of four Plumcoloured Starlings were dashing about and the black-and-white wings of an African Hoopoe in flight caught the eye.

As the road curves northwards towards what once was the Matandeni Hide, two African Openbill were soaring overhead.

The Matendeni Hide is no more, but the NRC Picnic Spot is a pleasant stop, with Grey Sunbird chip-chip-chipping away in the trees. I was watching a Variable Skink climb one of those trees when suddenly a Redfronted Tinker Barbet alighted on it. What was strange was that the bird looked heat-stressed, with its beak wide open, and it was totally silent – unusual on a day that only reached 33°C for a bird that normally calls incessantly through even the hottest days!

Typical woodland birds like Blackbacked Puffback, Cardinal Woodpecker, Orangebreasted Bush Shrike and Common Scimitarbill were also present, while Crested Francolin and Red Duiker are often seen on the road to Ziposheni.

Another Ndumo special, the infrequent Caspian Tern, allowed for great views as it was flying close to the shore of the Nyamithi Pan.

This fever tree lined oasis is well worth paying closer attention to via a guided walk; on the last two occasions I have been to Ndumo, the drought meant there was no water around the hides, with all the water birds concentrated closer to the inlet near the Mjanshi road. While the egrets, flamingos and pelicans were all way to the left of the hide, where the water has retreated to, a Spurwinged Goose did present itself straight in front of the hide on the bone-dry pan!

As we crossed the Mjanshi Spruit on the guided walk, we were welcomed by a pair of Malachite Kingfisher and as the water pooled in the pan we spotted Wood Sandpiper, Saddlebilled Stork, Greenshank, Pied Avocet and a Grey Heron atop a Hippopotamus!

Smaller waders were plentiful too with Ringed Plover, Kittlitz’s Plover looking mean guarding their bit of dry land, Common and Curlew Sandpipers and a big flock of Little Stint, which looked like tiny dots on the pan. Broadbilled Rollers were in the fever trees.

Both Lesser and Greater Flamingo were present, along with Pinkbacked Pelican and Great White Pelican, which suddenly stampeded off the banks into the water, obviously mobbing a school of fish, although probably only the first ten pelicans caught anything!

The Ndumo campsite is also excellent for birds and I was given a very happy welcome to camp by an Nyala female and her ‘teenage’ daughter eating the pods of a Natal Mahogany tree very close to where I was pitching my tent.

As always, Little Swifts and Lesser Striped Swallows were zooming around the buildings, calling contentedly, while a Blackeyed Bulbul called cheerfully from a tree that was not unlike the Whomping Willow from the Harry Potter series.

Hadeda Ibis provided a very noisy start to the next day, while Purplebanded Sunbird was up by the offices, where so many of the sunbirds seem to hang out.

A pair of Pied Crow have commandeered the communications mast in camp and croak loudly as they fly about, even attacking a drone that the staff were trying out!

Woollynecked Stork flew over camp, as did two displaying Cuckoo Hawk, while Yellowfronted Canary foraged on the sparse lawn. A pair of Yellowbellied Bulbul were sitting in a thicket with much wing-quivering going on.

Their Terrestrial Brownbul cousins were having a whale of a time at the bird bath close to my site, while a Bearded Robin sat by and watched.

Even while cooling off in the most-welcome swimming pool, birds can be spotted – a sub-adult African Fish Eagle was soaring majestically high above and White Helmetshrike were also seen.

Outside the main office, there is a lovely Marula tree and barely two metres off the ground, in the fork between two branches, is a Spotted Eagle Owl nest with at least one young, while a Wood Owl was spotted on the lawn next to the ablutions one evening.

The central portions of Ndumo are dominated by what is known as Mahemane Bush, a near-impenetrable thicket of inhospitable spiny trees and plants that must have been a nightmare for early travellers on the route to Delagoa Bay.

But the dense tangle is a perfect home for Apalises and a Yellowbreasted and a Rudd’s Apalis were having a skirmish, and in fact the rarer Rudd’s was more prominent on this trip than its common cousin.

As one heads north towards the Usutu River one comes across the clearing where the Diphini Hide once stood, overlooking the Mtikini tributary of the Usutu, which flows into Banzi Pan. Down below in the shadows amongst the Fever Trees was a Whitethroated Robin and a Greenbacked Camaroptera was busy stripping spider web off what looked like an egg casing. The little warbler-like bird got a bit tangled in the process but made off with quite a decent ball of webbing in the end, no doubt for use in sowing together its nest.

One can then turn south-west into more sand forest, with a giraffe deep inside this unusual habitat surprisingly being the first thing I saw on the Mabayeni Road.

The third day was set aside for the trip to Red Cliffs, one of my favourite excursions in any game reserve, anywhere.

The main road from camp was drier than usual, with the drought not having broken yet in early summer, but there was still plenty of birding activity, with quite the overnight storm having brought some much-needed rain.

An immature Southern Banded Snake Eagle flew into a leafless tree and stayed a good while, while there were five Purplecrested Lourie in a busy group, interacting and calling.

A five-strong group of Redbilled Helmetshrike included a couple of juveniles, while a Goldenbreasted Bunting went fluttering after an insect (they don’t just eat seeds).

Green Pigeon, Bluegrey Flycatcher, Goldenrumped Tinker Barbet and a little group of Chinspot Batis were present and Blackheaded Oriole was yet another bird gathering nesting material.

Red Cliffs was a hive of activity, with a Marsh Terrapin crossing the entrance road, no doubt coming from nearby Shokwe Pan and looking for a temporary pan made by the rain.

Two Yellowspotted Nicator were really unobtrusive even though they were calling loudly, in stark contrast to some Water Dikkop that were roosting calmly by some foliage on a sandbank of the Usutu River. Until a Southern Banded Snake Eagle flew over and then all hell broke loose!

A pair of Pied Kingfisher were hovering over the river and some Yellowbilled Stork were far upstream, but a Little Sparrowhawk, closer to hand, was given away by a Forktailed Drongo dive-bombing it.

Where is Ndumo?

Detailed map of Ndumo

Sightings List

Vervet Monkey

Nyala

Crested Guineafowl

Southern Banded Snake Eagle

Forktailed Drongo

Little Swift

Lesser Striped Swallow

Emeraldspotted Wood Dove

Blackeyed Bulbul

Hadeda Ibis

Purplebanded Sunbird

Brownhooded Kingfisher

Impala

Crowned Hornbill

Purplecrested Lourie

Southern Black Flycatcher

Browncrowned Tchagra

Little Bee-Eater

Fantailed Flycatcher

Southern Black Tit

Cape White-Eye

Redbilled Oxpecker

Gorgeous Bush Shrike

Egyptian Goose

Whitebellied Sunbird

Steppe Buzzard

Yellowbilled Kite

Whitebrowed Scrub Robin

Sombre Bulbul

Longbilled Crombec

Yellow Weaver

Sabota Lark

Plumcoloured Starling

Glossy Starling

African Hoopoe

Yellowbilled Hornbill

African Openbill

Grey Sunbird

Spottedbacked Weaver

Variable Skink

Redfronted Tinker Barbet

Blackbacked Puffback

Cardinal Woodpecker

European Swallow

Orangebreasted Bush Shrike

Common Scimitarbill

Crested Francolin

Red Duiker

Redbilled Helmetshrike

Bateleur

Striped Kingfisher

Blue Wildebeest

Plains Zebra

Goldenbreasted Bunting

Pied Crow

Woollynecked Stork

Pallid Flycatcher

Rattling Cisticola

Grey Duiker

Kurrichane Thrush

Yellowbreasted Apalis

Rudd’s Apalis

Whitethroated Robin

Greenbacked Camaroptera

Giraffe

European Bee-Eater

Goldentailed Woodpecker

Black Kite

Rock Monitor

Redeyed Dove

Goldenrumped Tinker Barbet

Yellowfronted Canary

Yellowthroated Sparrow

Cuckoo Hawk

Yellowbellied Bulbul

African Fish Eagle

Paradise Flycatcher

Great White Egret

Lesser Flamingo

Spurwinged Goose

Pinkbacked Pelican

Trumpeter Hornbill

Striped Skink

Blackheaded Oriole

Chinspot Batis

Marsh Terrapin

Yellowspotted Nicator

Blacksmith Plover

Water Dikkop

Threebanded Plover

Yellowbilled Stork

Blackwinged Stilt

Blackbellied Starling

Greenbacked Heron

African Pied Wagtail

Little Sparrowhawk

Pied Kingfisher

White Helmetshrike

Cape Dwarf Gecko

Wood Owl

Green Pigeon

Bluegrey Flycatcher

Malachite Kingfisher

Wood Sandpiper

Saddlebilled Stork

Greater Honeyguide

Greenshank

Broadbilled Roller

Pied Avocet

Grey Heron

Ringed Plover

Kittlitz’s Plover

Common Sandpiper

Curlew Sandpiper

Little Stint

Hippopotamus

Nile Crocodile

Greater Flamingo

Goliath Heron

Collared Sunbird

Caspian Tern

Great White Pelican

African Spoonbill

Whitebreasted Cormorant

Little Egret

Terrestrial Bulbul

Bearded Robin

Spotted Eagle Owl

Warthog

 

With the Crocodile River and the Kruger National Park forming its one boundary and its excellent design, the 13^th hole at Leopard Creek, outside Malelane, is surely one of the best holes in world golf.

A 505-metre par-five, an elevated tee shot has to cross a stream that splits the fairway, while avoiding a well-placed bunker on the right of the landing zone. With the fairway sloping right-to-left, and with the stream curving around to run the rest of the length of the hole down the left, any drive that goes left will land up in the water hazard.

If the first shot is successful, a big choice then awaits as to whether to take on the green, which hangs 32 metres above the Crocodile River and is protected by three bunkers and a pond, as well as thick grass behind the green.

Once on the putting surface, there is a wonderful view over the Crocodile River and into Kruger National Park, with Hippopotamus, Elephant, various antelope, Warthog and numerous different bird species almost always spotted.

Brandon Stone, who won last weekend’s Alfred Dunhill Championship at Leopard Creek with a superb 22-under-par total of 266, the second-best winning score at the event, certainly rates the 13^th hole very highly.

“That’s my favourite hole in the world, without even exaggerating one little bit, it really is special. The fact is it’s not just a location; the actual hole’s design itself, I think it’s a really tricky tee-shot. You’ve got to really hit a good tee-shot to hit that fairway.

“And then if you hit the fairway it’s still not an easy par-five green to get into. I mean nine times out of 10, I’ll actually lay up; I’ve even written on my book, if it’s anything more than a six-iron, it’s not even worth going at because that green is just so tricky to hit; you just can’t even see the left side.

“So I think if I can play that hole under-par for the week, I’ll be happy, because I think a lot of other guys are going to get a little bit too greedy and it’s going to come and bite them a little bit. And then if they go over the back, something else could bite them,” Stone said before going eagle-bogey-birdie-birdie on the hole.

On the final day, I watched two three-balls play the hole and the scores amongst those six golfers ranged from Keith Horne’s eagle to a couple of sevens by Bryce Easton and Pablo Larrazabal.

It’s a classic risk-and-reward hole designed by Gary Player and although 13 golfers over the four days made double-bogey or worse, at least they didn’t fall foul of the two-metre long crocodile that was lurking inside the pool next to the green!

It was also the hole when Stone finally closed the door on Charl Schwartzel in the final round, making birdie while the defending champion wasted a superb drive by finding a greenside bunker, taking two shots to get out and finishing with a bogey that left him five behind.

As captivating as the golf is, the view from the green into Kruger National Park tears you away and even the competitors linger a bit, the joy of spotting something special undoubtedly lifting spirits in a place that is often brutally hot and was 40 degrees in the final round.

The next day, while driving through Kruger, exactly opposite the 13^th, perhaps 200 metres from the river, I came across a family of Wild Dog, just showing what special potential sightings are there.