Ken Borland

Jake White has always had an attachment to big, physical players, but the new Bulls coach was most excited about the attacking flair on offer from the several whippets in his squad when he named his roster on Thursday for their SuperFan Saturday match against the Sharks at Loftus Versfeld.

The squad includes two Springbok Sevens players in Stedman Gans and Kurt-Lee Arendse, and there are other players like Gio Aplon and Jade Stighling who make up for their lack of size with the size of their talent.

“I’m told I usually only like big okes and that we’re only going to play like the Bulls used to,” White said ironically, “but these are little guys with lots of skill and pace and I’m really excited about them. Watch this space!”

The other selections that the former World Cup winning Springbok coach seemed particularly excited about where that of 19-year-old loosehead prop Jan-Hendrik Wessels, who is 6’3 and 120kg and spent a season with Clermont Auvergne in France, and, at the other end of the spectrum, veteran flyhalf Morne Steyn.

“Jan-Hendrik reminds me of Os du Randt and he will be a Springbok, there’s no doubt about it. We need to give him a chance to develop and playing with Springboks this weekend and learning about senior rugby will be a great experience for him before the U21 tournament starts next week,” White said of the former SA Schools and Grey College star.

“I’ve never worked with Morne Steyn before and when he was flourishing in South Africa, I was overseas. I did watch his progression at Stade Francais, where he won championships with them, and he’s just an unbelievable team guy, full of energy. He’s a lot more athletic than people think and the older he’s got, the more he understands what he can and cannot do. He looks after himself, he’s very fit and he’s a great role-model. There’s no doubt he still has a massive role to play at the Bulls and he’s exactly the sort of general we need,” White said of the 36-year-old, who has 66 Test caps and three Super Rugby titles to his name.

The Bulls will be without the exciting front row expertise of tighthead Marcel van der Merwe, loosehead Lizo Gqoboka and hooker Johan Grobbelaar, who are all unfit for play at the moment. Grobbelaar has had a particularly unfortunate time, having his appendix out seven weeks ago and then catching the Covid-19 virus, but White said the 22-year-old will be back in the fray soon.

Given the recent history of underperformance at Loftus Versfeld, the maiden season under White will see the expectation levels start at a high level. But the coach stressed that the weekend’s hit-out is not so much about the result as getting the combinations right for when the Super Rugby local competition starts and also ensuring they develop some continuity.

“We have lots of options on Saturday, but we’ll probably start with the ‘team’, see how the combinations go and then try out others in a match situation. So far we’ve been running moves with both teams knowing the plays against each other, so it will be nice to try them when the opposition does not know them. But the most important thing is the combinations.

“Saturday is all about continuity as well, especially if we lose some players to the Springboks, who have a trial next week. It’s important to remember we finished last in Super Rugby and seventh in the Currie Cup, we’ve won one out of six games this year. So we can only go up, but we do still have expectations on us. But I think the pressure is on everybody, the Sharks have been front-runners and far above everyone else,” White said.

Squad – Gio Aplon, Jade Stighling, Cornal Hendricks, Stedman Gans, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Clinton Swart, David Kriel, Travis Ismaiel, Stravino Jacobs, Morne Steyn, Chris Smith, Ivan van Zyl, Embrose Papier, Marco Jansen van Vuren, Duane Vermeulen, Nizaam Carr, Tim Agaba, Arno Botha, Muller Uys, Marco van Staden, Ruan Nortje, Juandre Kruger, Jason Jenkins, Sintu Manjezi, Trevor Nyakane, Mornay Smith, Corniel Els, Schalk Erasmus, Jacques van Rooyen, Jan-Hendrik Wessels.

With 13 players missing from the 23-man squad that beat the Stormers in their last SuperRugby game back in mid-March, Sharks coach Sean Everitt will be anxious that his team’s level of performance does not plummet into the depths of a virtual Kloof Gorge when they travel to Pretoria to take on the Bulls on SuperFan Saturday.

Everitt named his 30-man squad for the trip on Thursday and he will be leaning heavily on established combinations like Ox Nche and Thomas du Toit in the front row, locks Ruben van Heerden and Hyron Andrews, halfbacks Sanele Nohamba and Curwin Bosch, and Jeremy Ward and Lukhanyo Am in midfield.

“Saturday’s match is all about preparation, because we’ve been out for six months we need to reinstall and revise our game-plan. We need to make sure everyone understands it and we’re taking a few youngsters up with us to see where they are too in terms of fitting into our system. I’ll be looking at our tempo, accuracy and conditioning because we don’t know where we are right now with those.

“The players we have brought in suit the way we want to play. A guy like Manie Libbok is multiskilled, really versatile and has dangerous x-factor. He offers something in the same mould as Bosch and Aphelele Fassi when we play him at fullback. Werner Kok is also a workhorse and his work-rate epitomises the energy and enthusiasm we want to play with. He’ll start on the wing and then we’ll play him a bit at centre in the second half,” Everitt said on Thursday.

After such a promising season was washed down the basin by Covid-19, the Sharks are in a rebuilding phase and several new faces have the chance to establish themselves in the senior team. Saturday’s match at Loftus Versfeld is an important step in testing the depth of the squad.

“We were happy where we were, but we had been very fortunate from an injury point of view and were reaping the benefits of a long pre-season in which we did a lot of work on the changes to our game. We were on a roll, but dwelling in the past is not something I do, we are looking forward. It was sad for guys like Louis Schreuder, Tyler Paul and Andre Esterhuizen, who were in their last season with the Sharks.

“But it’s all a clean slate now, it’s a whole different competition because the Bulls have done some really good recruiting and the Lions too. We’re going back to the drawing board to see how we can improve. We’ve had some bad luck with injuries and we are missing some quality players like Fassi, Tambwe and Nkosi, but we started preparing a while ago with two squads,” Everitt said.

Players not considered for this weekend’s squad due to injury were fullback Fassi, loose forwards Henco and James Venter, hooker Kerron van Vuuren and wings Madosh Tambwe and Sbu Nkosi.

Squad: Ox Nche, Mzamo Majola, Dylan Richardson, Dan Jooste, Thomas du Toit, John-Hubert Meyer, Ruben van Heerden, JJ van der Mescht, Hyron Andrews, Emile van Heerden, Evan Roos, Adam Mountfort, Celimpilo Gumede, Tera Mtembu, Sikhumbuzo Notshe, Phepsi Buthelezi, Grant Williams, Sanele Nohamba, Jaden Hendrikse, Curwin Bosch, Jordan Chait, Muller du Plessis, Caleb Dingaan, Jeremy Ward, Marius Louw, Lukhanyo Am, JP Pietersen, Werner Kok, Manie Libbok, Thaakir Abrahams.

Former Proteas all-rounder and current Warriors coach Robin Peterson says he felt like he was one of the first Black players to be ‘planted’ in South African domestic cricket after unity and one of his first experiences was being called a “K…..” by his favourite cricketer growing up.

Peterson made his first-class debut in January 1999 for Eastern Province B and went on to play 183 franchise games for the Warriors, Cape Cobras and Knights, as well as representing South Africa in 15 Tests, 79 ODIs and 21 T20 Internationals.

“I was probably one of the first players of colour to be planted in the system, I say ‘planted’ because it felt like that. When I played for Eastern Province, there were only two players of colour in the team, myself and Garnett Kruger. We were in the minority, everyone else was White. And I was called the K-word in a provincial game years ago by someone who represented South Africa in a lot of Test matches.

“He was actually my hero growing up and I respected him, so it was a very sad thing. As one of the first generation of Black players, I didn’t have the confidence to put up a fuss, who do you go to, there were no protocols in place. But it made me angry and motivated, and I got a hundred in that game. He is no longer involved in cricket in South Africa, I don’t feel it’s necessary to go back into that space, I just feel pity for him. And I want to confront the issues of today and not dwell in the past,” Peterson said in a recent webinar for the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation on racism in cricket.

In his new role as coach of the Warriors, Peterson called for greater consultation when it came to transformation policies, which he called ‘outdated’. This year is the 22^nd anniversary of the establishment of Cricket South Africa’s transformation committee, while the decision to make the rapid Africanisation of cricket a priority is celebrating its seventh anniversary, and it is four years since the existing quota of six players of colour, three of which must be Black African, was implemented.

“As a coach now in the system, I find it very divisive and our policies on transformation are a bit outdated, calling each other Black Africans and Coloureds. Do they align with high-performance sport? I find it very difficult as coach to keep a united changeroom, all these silos just create more division. We are the people who implement the policy so we need to be consulted.

“We need a more collaborative and consultative approach because at the moment people are fighting each other in the changerooms. We want a united South Africa and the current policy does not reflect that. The coaches were never consulted and we have to implement it. We need 11 players of different skills, not just numbers like 6+3. The relevant people need to start being consulted,” Peterson said.

The country’s rugby players may have returned to training this week but planning for them to actually play competitive matches is not getting any easier with Jurie Roux, the CEO of SA Rugby, confirming on Tuesday that there is “about zero chance” of South Africa hosting any international rugby this year.

And the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are likely to deeply affect the 2021 rugby calendar as well, necessitating major changes in local rugby. Roux did reiterate though that SA Rugby are still hopeful that they will be able to return to play at least by mid-September with local competitions.

“It is still a very fluid situation and there are multiple factors feeding into our daily decisions. But if anyone thinks we are going to return to a format that is close to what existed before this pandemic then they are making a big mistake. The market has corrected itself, it was due a change and it has been brought on by Covid. Rugby will be significantly different, we are trying to prepare for 2020/21 but everything else is in flux.

“There are no plans to host any international games this year because there is about zero chance of entrance into South Africa with our borders closed. The only chance of playing international rugby is in the New Zealand bubble in the Rugby Championship. The broadcast revenue from the Rugby Championship is significant and international rugby will hopefully resume towards the end of October, whatever we can fit in before mid-December,” Roux told an online media conference on Tuesday. a

International travel is not expected to return to normal until midway through next year and quarantine requirements are also squeezing the calendar, and while Roux said SuperRugby was not dead after New Zealand expressed their preference for a trans-Tasman competition with Australia, SA Rugby are hard-pressed to find space for a cross-conference competition before the British and Irish Lions tour to South Africa kicks off in early July.

“They stated their preferred structure due to restrictions and the costs of travel with fewer flights to New Zealand, and there is every indication that ourselves and Argentina will not be able to go there without spending two weeks in quarantine until the end of May, so the previous format of SuperRugby is just not viable. So New Zealand will play domestically first and then hopefully we can have some sort of crossover SuperRugby.

“So the plan is for us to play domestically from February to April and if the borders are opened then we can have some sort of format across conferences, with Argentina most likely with us. But it all needs to finish by the time the British & Irish Lions tour starts in the first week of July. We are all part of the Sanzaar joint venture and there are legal agreements in place,” Roux said.