Ken Borland

Jake White has been able to choose his returning Springboks for Saturday’s tricky United Rugby Championship clash with Cardiff at Loftus Versfeld, but he knows management of his playing resources is going to be crucial as the Bulls head into a busy Christmas month of rugby.

It is unchartered territory for the Bulls, and all the South African URC franchises, as they are simply not used to playing rugby at this time of year. Last December the Omicron variant of Covid put the tournament on hold, but this year the Bulls will visit the Stormers two days before Christmas and will be playing the Sharks in Durban on the last day of the year.

After taking on Cardiff, the Bulls will make their European Professional Club Rugby bow by hosting Olympique Lyon and then visiting the Exeter Chiefs in the Champions Cup. But instead of perhaps resting them after the Springboks’ end-of-year tour, White has named flank Marco van Staden, flyhalf Johan Goosen, wing Canan Moodie and fullback Kurt-Lee Arendse in the starting XV to take on Cardiff.

“It’s wonderful for us to have the Springboks back, it gives us a good team to take on a very good Cardiff side, who have beaten both the Stormers and the Sharks,” White said on Friday.

“Those Boks have done well, pulling off a massive win over England at Twickenham and they will be on a high. That injection of really talented players has brought energy to training, which spreads across the group.

“I don’t want to put the handbrake on that, we want to continue that, the positive vibe, we must embrace it. But we can’t keep the same team for the next six-to-nine weeks, we have to be at our best.

“I understand the enormity of the Champions Cup, and you need a squad that is big and good enough. It’s going to be unique for us, going from 38° in Pretoria to -2 and snowing in Exeter,” White said.

Assistant coach Pine Pienaar spoke on Tuesday about Cardiff’s strengths and getting the balance right in the Bulls selection, and White named a physical loose trio on Friday with Van Staden and Cyle Brink returning to the starting back row.

But against the Cardiff side who showed how brilliant they are in terms of game-management in thrashing the Sharks last weekend, there will be much focus on Goosen’s return to the No.10 jersey, with the Bulls hoping he will be at his adroit best.

“I’d like to play Johan as much as possible and I think we’ll see over the next six weeks that the more he plays the better he’ll become,” White said.

“He was out for a long time and he played in different positions, in and out of the team, which was not ideal for him. But he now has a long list of games coming up, we’ll need to manage him and get him playing well again.”

Bulls: Kurt-Lee Arendsti, David Kriel, Cornal Hendricks, Harold Vorster, Canan Moodie, Johan Goosen, Zak Burger, Elrigh Louw, Cyle Brink, Marco Van Staden, Ruan Nortje (c), Ruan Vermaak, Mornay Smith, Johan Grobbelaar, Gerhard Steenekamp. Bench – Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Simphiwe Matanzima, Francois Klopper, Janko Swanepoel, Nizaam Carr, Embrose Papier, Chris Smith, Lionel Mapoe.

Playing the Blair Atholl Golf and Equestrian Estate course is the road less travelled for most of the South African Open field, but Thriston Lawrence has been there before and he equalled his course record on the massive Gary Player designed layout to top the leaderboard after the first round on Thursday.

The course has only hosted one professional event before – the Blair Atholl Championship in October 2021 – and Lawrence claimed the course record with a remarkable 64 in the final round that catapulted him into sixth place.

On Thursday he repeated that performance with another eight-under-par 64 to end the first day of the SA Open with a one-stroke lead. Lawrence, who won the rookie of the year award for the 2022 DP World Tour, birdied the second hole but then bogeyed the par-three third. From then on it was a cruise for the highly-promising 25-year-old as he gathered eight more birdies, five of them on the back nine.

The sheer length of the Blair Atholl course – at 7461 metres it is the longest in DP World Tour history – may be daunting for many in the field, but Lawrence enjoys the challenge.

“That was good fun,” Lawrence smiled after signing for his 64, “this course is quite familiar to me after I played the Sunshine Tour event here last year and I’m very happy to tie my course record from the final round then.

“I just tried to keep doing what I do, stick to the game-plan and be aggressive off the tee, and I hit good drives, my approach play was really great and I dropped a few putts today.

“It’s really long, but I like hitting full shots into the green, mid-to-long irons are my game. My long game is my strength and this course definitely suits me.

“It’s just good on the eye for me, the course just seems open for me and obviously I brought a bit of confidence today from that last round last year,” Lawrence said.

Englishman Ross Fisher, another of the longer hitters on tour, also went to town on the back nine, collecting five birdies as well, adding to the three birdies and a bogey, also on the third, he had on the front nine, to finish one behind Lawrence on seven-under. Fisher’s last DP World Tour win came at the 2014 Tshwane Open, which was played at Copperleaf, the previous longest-ever course in tour history, so that is a good omen for the 42-year-old.

Jens Fahrbring, the 38-year-old Swede, joined Fisher on seven-under with a superb bogey-free 65 as dusk settled over Lanseria.

Germany’s Matti Schmid held the clubhouse lead for much of the day with three eagles leading him to a six-under 66, where Scott Jamieson joined him late in the day, the Scot also going bogey-free. JJ Senekal also posted 66.

Luke Brown, who won the Blair Atholl Championship last year, parked himself on five-under with a 67 that also did not feature a single dropped shot. Spain’s Santiago Tarrio and Italian Edoardo Molinari also posted 67s, as did Northern Ireland’s Tom McKibbin, who made a hole-in-one on the 213-metre par-three 11^th in just his second DP World Tour start.

South Africa’s Hennie du Plessis also registered an ace, on the par-three third hole.

Wilco Nienaber, perhaps the longest hitter of them all, also finished on five-under, offsetting a double-bogey five at the 17^th with an eagle on the par-five closing hole.

Dan Bradbury has career earnings of just €32 537.50 and no playing status on the DP World Tour, but he is in the Joburg Open owing to a sponsor’s invitation, and on top of the leaderboard after a fairytale first round because of his own brilliance in seizing whatever opportunities he gets.

The 23-year-old Bradbury fired a superb eight-under-par 63 to take the lead after a weather-disrupted opening day at the Houghton Golf Club, leading Germany’s Nick Bachem by one stroke. Two Frenchmen are on six-under-par, Romain Langasque having completed his round and Clement Berardo having gone through 11 holes when play was suspended due to lightning at 5.11pm and then called off an hour later.

Bradbury, from Wakefield in Yorkshire, England, turned pro in July after five successful years as an amateur on the U.S. Collegiate system, playing for the Lincoln Memorial and Florida State university teams. He made three promising Challenge Tour appearances, but then three-putted his final hole of DP World Tour Qualifying School to miss advancing from the First Stage by one stroke.

Bradbury has played in a DP World Tour event before as a late replacement, making the most of an 11^th-hour invite to the Open de Espana last month and finishing tied-13^th. Not even the expensive flight could stop him from taking up another last-ditch call to compete in the Joburg Open, and he made the most of his chance on Thursday.

“I was given a spot on Friday night, flew out here on the weekend with my mum Sandra, just to see what we can do,” Bradbury said after his stellar round, which included seven birdies and two eagles, as well as a double-bogey and a dropped shot on his last hole, the par-three ninth.

“It was lovely to have my mother walk the fairways with me, it was as good a start as I could have wished for, but it’s the end of the week that is most important.

“It’s up there with my best days in my career, but I had some pretty special ones too during my American college days. I’ve still got work to do though,” the genial Bradbury said.

Thunderstorms always seem to come into play on the highveld in summer and Bradbury felt his momentum was disrupted by an earlier delay in mid-afternoon.

“I got some momentum going on my back nine, but the thunderstorm stopped that. It made me think a bit more about leading. I had hit great drives on three and five, and had nine-irons in on both, 180 and 188 metres, flags at the front of the green and I made the eagles.

“This is not the longest course and a good drive is key, and then the main thing is to have the confidence that you can hit that far at altitude, the ball was going miles.

“It’s my first time playing at real altitude, but my South African caddy, Keegan Snalam, has been great helping me,” Bradbury said.

South Africans have always contended hard at the Joburg Open, with nine local winners in the 14 events, and this time defending champion Thriston Lawrence and veteran Jaco van Zyl are leading the charge on five-under.

Casey Jarvis, Dylan Mostert, Louis de Jager, Wilco Nienaber and Jbe Kruger, who still has six holes to play, are all on four-under.

New Proteas Test coach Shukri Conrad is not aiming to be the manufacturer of some dramatic new way of playing five-day cricket, but he has nevertheless made some brave calls as South Africa head into a new era in what most players still consider the pinnacle of the game as they take on the West Indies in the first of a two-match series in Centurion from Tuesday.

Conrad has not only installed a new Test captain in Temba Bavuma, whose predecessor Dean Elgar remains in the team but needs to regain his ability to make tough runs, but also cut a trio of players who would probably have expected to still be involved.

Dropping two of the three leading run-scorers in the series in Australia over the festive season is certainly a tough call if you are Kyle Verreynne, who scored two half-centuries in the three Tests, or Sarel Erwee, whose last Test innings was the dogged 42 not out he scored to help South Africa save the third Test in Sydney.

Lungi Ngidi has also been a regular in the Test team, playing 11 of the 18 Tests in the last two years. He has taken 33 wickets in that time, at an excellent average of just 21.63. Ngidi has also conceded only 3.06 runs-per-over in that time, all of which suggests he plays an important role in the Proteas attack, but Conrad has seemingly gone the bold route of wanting the express pace of uncapped Gerald Coetzee instead.

Heinrich Klaasen and Aiden Markram are the batsmen to benefit from the axing of Verreynne and Erwee. There is no doubting that both are amongst the most talented strokeplayers in the country, but Klaasen has scored just 48 runs in four Test innings, and Markram makes yet another return based on just how damn good he looks whenever he picks up a bat, except when it comes to actually scoring runs at Test level.

Typically of Conrad, who is never afraid to back his big calls, he has already stated that Markram will return to opening the batting alongside Elgar. The new coach is not reinventing how the Proteas play Test cricket, but he is certainly aiming for a more aggressive, positive approach.

Conrad was walking around the SuperSport Park field on Monday morning during the Proteas’ final preparations like a sergeant major, but he is not all bark and bite; he found time to give the no-doubt hurting Elgar an arm around the shoulder and a rub of the neck.

If the 55-year-old Conrad is the equivalent of the Proteas’ chairman of the board, then Bavuma is the new CEO tasked with getting the best out of the staff.

Bavuma is no stranger to international captaincy, of course, having led the Proteas in 17 ODIs and 25 T20s. He is highly-respected by his team-mates for his tactical acumen, technical ability and tenacity.

Bavuma has been no stranger to tough times recently, and he was stressing the need for his team to embrace a fresh start against the West Indies.

“These are exciting times, it’s the start of a new journey and I would like us to start with a clean slate and play the way we want to play,” Bavuma said at Centurion on Monday.

“We have got enough resources in the 15-man squad to adapt to conditions and back up whatever tactics we want to employ. And there are other leaders within the team, guys who have been around for a while, who I can definitely lean on. We just need to ensure we are all speaking the same language.

“The brand of cricket we play is how we want to measure ourselves, but we still need to man up. We know as a batting unit that we need to score the runs, we need to go out and do what we need to do.

“A lot of these guys have won a series against India not long ago when no-one really backed us to do that. I always preach playing together as a team and we don’t want to lose that,” Bavuma said.

Fresh starts almost always involve a positive approach to things, and it seems the Proteas are as concerned with how they go about playing as what they produce. Conrad will have to live or die by his brave choices, and perhaps he will discover that sometimes producing the goods is all that matters, no matter how you look doing it.