Ken Borland

Nollis Marais was confirmed as the Bulls’ SuperRugby coach for the next four years over the weekend and he said he will continue with the enterprising new style of rugby he has introduced in the Currie Cup and which has taken the Blue Bulls to the brink of a home semi-final.

“Of course we will need to be more accurate in SuperRugby, but we’ll have more time to prepare than we did for the Currie Cup. We will change one or two things in the three months we have pre-season and there’s still a lot of improvement needed,” Marais said.

“It’s a huge surprise to be appointed because I only applied on the second-last day, but I’d like to thank my captain [Lappies Labuschagne] and the support of the fans and players because their backing is what got me appointed. I know there will be a lot of challenges and we have a lot to improve on for SuperRugby,” the 43-year-old said.

Bulls CEO Barend van Graan described Marais as “fearless” and a “straightshooter” who has “turned the tide at Loftus Versfeld”.

“He knows the players and understands them and they have adapted very well to his coaching style. The board and I have got a lot of faith in Nollis and that’s why we have given him a four-year contract. It gives him the opportunity to build,” Van Graan said.

Even though the Blue Bulls will go into the final round of league play in the Currie Cup with a firm hold on second place, four points ahead of Western Province, after their 48-27 win over the Eastern Province Kings at Loftus Versfeld, the match showed the improvement that is still needed by the young side if they are to be a force in Super Rugby.

The Kings went into half-time with a 20-17 lead having dominated the gain-line and been slick with ball-in-hand as they probed both the near and wide channels. The Bulls managed to up the intensity to produce an impressive second-half display, but the ability to play an 80-minute game still eludes them.

“The first half was a bit lacklustre, we made mistakes and they capitalised, and we only started to get momentum in the second half. The pattern needs to suit the players and we needed to play less expansively because we lost Deon Stegmann before the game and Jacques du Plessis had to move from lock to flank, when we wanted to play a quick game. We had to stick to playing the ball closer and not going wide and the best thing was the improvement in the driving maul. We put them under pressure with it in the second half and it paid off for us,” Marais said.

A dismal first half put all their hard work this year at risk, but the Blue Bulls came storming back in the second half to beat the Eastern Province Kings 48-27 in their Currie Cup match at Loftus Versfeld on Friday night to stay on track for a home semi-final.

The Bulls trailed 17-20 at half-time as the Eastern Cape side pondered a sensational victory in Pretoria, but two moments of dazzling brilliance by scrumhalf Francois Hougaard led to tries in the 56^th and 66^th minutes as the home side pulled clear for a comfortable bonus-point victory. With the Cape mourning her side’s 62-32 thrashing at the hands of the Lions at Ellis Park, the Bulls now have a four-point lead over Western Province heading into the final weekend of round-robin action.

The Bulls’ defence around the fringes was woefully absent in the first half as centre Tim Whitehead and flyhalf Elgar Watts scored tries after breaks by side-stepping wing Sylvian Mahuza and scrumhalf Enrico Acker respectively.

They came out a different side after coach Nollis Marais no doubt laid down the law in the half-time break, and they employed the rolling maul to good effect, with Lappies Labuschagne (twice), centre Dries Swanepoel and replacement flank Ruan Steenkamp all scoring from the drive, which also caused two Kings players to be yellow-carded – replacement front-rankers Edgar Marutlulle and Schalk Ferreira.

Hougaard’s own try was a scintillating 55m effort as he broke from the back of a retreating scrum and beat half-a-dozen defenders with blinding pace, while he broke blind from a lineout drive 10 minutes later, Steenkamp cracking on the pace before passing back to the scrumhalf, who juggled and stumbled but powered on to within a couple of metres from the line,  substitute prop Werner Kruger scoring from the resultant ruck.

Scorers

Blue Bulls – Tries: Lappies Labuschagne (2), Dries Swanepoel, Francois Hougaard, Werner Kruger, Ruan Steenkamp, Jacques du Plessis. Conversions: Tian Schoeman (4), Louis Fouche. Penalty: Schoeman.

EP Kings – Tries: Tim Whitehead, Elgar Watts, JP du Plessis. Conversions: Scott van Breda (3). Penalties: Van Breda (2).

It is now one month since South Africa’s painful World Cup exit and a range of questions still remain despite Cricket South Africa’s defiant dead-batting of any suggestions there was interference in the selection of the team for that semi-final against New Zealand.

Fresh questions have sprung up like: Why would Mike Horn say things like “It doesn’t matter how politics or the quota influenced the players” and “Now we need to fill gaps, now we have to make the difference with less but give more,” if there hadn’t been any interference?

If three players of colour was sufficient for half the games the Proteas played at the World Cup, including the quarterfinal, why would that not be the case for the semi-final?

Why do CSA not understand how Aaron Phangiso not playing a single game at the World Cup is a disaster for transformation?

And, perhaps most tellingly, if there was no interference, why hasn’t a single player stood up and told the media to leave the whole selection saga in the past?

The players are understandably reticent to break out of the corral and speak openly about what happened on tour because there have been precedents before where players have been victimised or punished either openly or behind the scenes for speaking out of turn.

But all is clearly not well in South African cricket, even if CSA still want to live in la-la land with investigations conducted by their own directors and statements that are playing with semantics. Six months after the launch of the #ProteaFire campaign, the public trust in our cricket administrators is back to the minimal levels of 2009-2012 during the Gerald Majola bonus scandal.

Their rapid investigation last week immediately reminded me of former CSA acting president AK Khan’s investigation which cleared Majola of any serious wrongdoing, but which was subsequently described as a “cover-up” by the Nicholson Inquiry.

Team unity is often a fragile thing after the bitter disappointment of defeat, but it is clear that the players believe there was interference, it is they who have been driving the rumours as the media speak to people once-removed from the side. Even this week, I had fresh corroboration of the interference from someone, intimately involved in cricket, who had spoken to one of the players of colour in the team.

In order for our national team to bloom as they move forward into fresh challenges, this selection issue needs to be dealt with in a manner that satisfies not just the CSA board, but also the players and the stakeholders of the game – the public.

Personally, I believe the first step in achieving this is for captain AB de Villiers – the only player who really knows what happened in the selection meeting – to speak out and reveal what the truth is from his eyes.

De Villiers will not be the first captain who didn’t get his preferred team – rightly so because selection panels are there to balance out the views of the skipper to avoid the risk of cliques developing in the side – but as South Africa’s finest cricketer, he is in the unique position of being able to speak out because surely not even the CSA board would dare to punish him for honesty?

It would not be the first time there has been interference in selection – the cases of Jacques Rudolph and Charl Langeveldt readily spring to mind – but it would also not be the first time there has been a misunderstanding between the captain and the selectors.

There have also been suggestions that the Proteas are reacting to their own poor performance by making a controversial selection the scapegoat.

Whatever the case, the responsibility now rests on De Villiers, as the leader of the team, to lance South African cricket’s festering boil as soon as possible.

Western Province won’t need an informer inside the Vodacom Blue Bulls camp to tell them how their Absa Currie Cup semi-final opponents will approach Saturday’s game at Newlands after the visitors yesterday named Handre Pollard at inside centre.

Pollard is perhaps the most incisive flyhalf with ball in hand in South Africa since Henry Honiball and the Western Province defence will be on red alert every time the Bulls visit their 22, with the new Springbok sensation proving lethal in recent weeks every time he has run at the opposition line.

But Western Province will not only be under threat from Pollard’s running skills. They can expect an aerial bombardment from the Bulls as well, with two accomplished tactical kickers lining up at 10 and 12 in Jacques-Louis Potgieter and Pollard, and wing Bjorn Basson, seemingly back at his best, giving chase.

“The unfortunate injury to Burger Odendaal gave us this opportunity to play Handre at inside centre, even though his first choice is flyhalf. He played a lot of his rugby at 12 last year and he will definitely bring something different. We feel confident with the options it gives us, we have two decision-makers at 10 and 12 now, they’re more than just kickers but they can also release pressure with the boot or produce attacking kicks,” Bulls coach Frans Ludeke said yesterday.

If the Bulls can get their fair share of front-foot ball from their forwards, then they certainly have the weapons to put Western Province under pressure.

“It’s definitely going to be a collision game, both teams have good packs and that’s where the game will be won or lost,” Bulls captain and flank Deon Stegmann said. “We’ve had some good games up front in the last few weeks, and our scrum and maul are definitely strengths.”

Western Province can expect plenty of ferocious ball-carrying from the Bulls, with Dean Greyling, Bongi Mbonambi and Werner Kruger named as the front row, while there will be explosiveness from the bench with Marcel van der Merwe, rotated scrumhalf Piet van Zyl, the returning Sampie Mastriet and Jesse Kriel lurking there.

Ludeke praised Western Province as a top-class side, but said his team had developed a considerable amount of momentum from a winning run under pressure.

“Western Province deserve to be top of the log, they have played great rugby this season and are deservedly hosting a semi-final. But whatever team takes their chances best on Saturday will win and we’ve seen now what our guys do in tight situations. It brought the guys together, they lifted their game, and the decision-making was excellent, like the way they handled the last few minutes of the must-win game against the Free State Cheetahs,” Ludeke said.

Blue Bulls team – 15-Ulrich Beyers, 14-Akona Ndungane, 13-William Small-Smith, 12-Handre Pollard, 11-Bjorn Basson, 10-Jacques-Louis Potgieter, 9-Rudy Paige, 8-Jono Ross, 7-Jacques du Plessis, 6-Deon Stegmann, 5-Grant Hattingh, 4-Paul Willemse, 3-Werner Kruger, 2-Bongi Mbonambi, 1-Dean Greyling. Reserves: 16-Callie Visagie, 17-Marcel van der Merwe, 18-Nicolaas Janse van Rensburg, 19-Wiaan Liebenberg, 20-Piet van Zyl, 21-Sampie Mastriet, 22-Jesse Kriel.