Ken Borland

The Bulls are going into the Currie Cup final with just one change to their team for the semi-final – Johan Grobbelaar starting at hooker and Schalk Erasmus going to the bench – which means disappointment for Sevens Springbok Stedman Gans.

The outside centre has been one of the stars of the season for the Bulls, but was a late withdrawal from last weekend’s semifinal against the Lions with a hamstring strain. Coach Jake White said on Thursday that Gans has not recovered enough for him to be willing to gamble on selecting him.

“I don’t think Stedman is ready, it would be a helluva risk to play him, especially since there’s often extra time in finals. So he’s not available, it was a tough call for him and I’m sure he’s very disappointed. But I’ve been very happy with Marco Jansen van Vuren as well, he’s defended well, especially against the Lions, who will really stretch and test you. So he has massive confidence at the moment,” White explained.

White chose to deflect a question over what the Bulls had learnt from their loss to the Sharks in their previous meeting, a 32-29 defeat in Durban last month, by saying if one learns more from defeats than from victory, then the Bulls are the “masters of learning” given their failure to win the Currie Cup since 2009.

“We should be the masters of learning then. The Bulls are tired of losing, tired of not playing in finals, so it’s a massive game on Saturday. We’re playing at home, so it’s a great opportunity and there is a tremendous hunger in the side. It’s an incredible achievement to host the final and now the cherry on top would be to win. Remembering that guys like Jean de Villiers and Schalk Burger, two of the best players I ever coached, never won the Currie Cup,” White said.

The 2007 World Cup winning coach acknowledged that winning the Currie Cup would be a highlight of his career, while adding that an international star like Duane Vermeulen had never lifted the famous old trophy as a captain.

“It would mean a lot to me to win because I have great respect for the Currie Cup. And you can see the players’ desire, which is giving them energy and an unbelievable drive to get it right on Saturday. Sometimes it’s great not to have won it before. It’s a great honour to win the Currie Cup, you think about the great players who have drunk out of the trophy …

“It’s a long time since the Bulls last won the Currie Cup and then you look at someone like Duane, who has won the Currie Cup twice and a World Cup, but he’s never won as captain. And the players can see what that means to him, so they are lifting their game. When your captain is a legend like that and he wants it so badly, you’re going to do whatever you have to do,” White said.

Bulls team – David Kriel, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Marco Jansen van Vuren, Cornal Hendricks, Stravino Jacobs, Morné Steyn, Ivan van Zyl, Duane Vermeulen (captain), Elrigh Louw, Marco van Staden, Ruan Nortje, Sintu Manjezi, Trevor Nyakane, Johan Grobbelaar, Lizo Gqoboka. Bench: Schalk Erasmus, Jacques van Rooyen, Mornay Smith, Jan Uys, Arno Botha, Embrose Papier, Chris Smith, Marnus Potgieter.

Newlands has been kind to the Sharks the last two times they have played there, including a 12-9 win in the Currie Cup final on October 27, 2018, and coach Sean Everitt says his team is quite comfortable travelling to Cape Town for their semi-final against Western Province on Saturday.

The Sharks have won their last two matches at Newlands, also beating them 12-9 in SuperRugby in 2019, and they have been triumphant in three of their last five outings at The Grand Old Lady of South African rugby. Those wins have all been narrow, however, all by less than six points, while their two defeats were heavy – by 11 and 22 points in 2018.

“We’re very happy to go to Cape Town, it’s a lot easier than going to the Highveld, especially playing in the afternoon at this time of year. It’s been really hot here in Durban, so we’re looking forward to better conditions and we do play well in those sort of conditions. The travel there certainly won’t deter us much.

“We did speak about the emotion involved from Western Province’s side that it might be their last game there. There’s a lot of tradition surrounding that stadium, including for the Sharks and we would really like to be the last team to win at Newlands. But we’re up against a desperate, emotional team with a good set-piece so it should make for a good game,” Everitt said this week.

Everitt also said that because of where the two teams are situated on the log – Western Province finished second and the Sharks were third – the home team will be favourites and that will bring added pressure.

“They finished second on the log, so we’re probably underdogs. So the pressure is on them playing at home, plus with all the emotion of Newlands. I’m not sure why the away team has won the last few playoffs between us, but it probably comes down to the pressure of playing at home. Because of that pressure, it’s all going to come down to error-rate and discipline.

“If we’re not accurate in receiving kicks then we may be in trouble. But having Aphelele Fassi back at fullback adds a different dimension to our counter-attack and Manie Libbok did really well at fullback too and is on the bench. From an attack point of view, maybe we haven’t performed as well as we would have liked, but without continuity you’re going to struggle to get that synergy in attack,” Everitt said.

Sharks’ last 5 results at Newlands

June 15, 2019             Won 12-9 (SR)

October 27, 2018        Won 17-12 (CC final)

September 29, 2018    Lost 28-50 (CC)

July 7, 2018                 Lost 16-27 (SR)

August 26, 2017         Won 21-20 (CC)

Sharks’ last 6 playoffs v WP/Stormers

October 27, 2018        Cape Town      Won 17-12 (Currie Cup final)

October 28, 2017        Durban                        Lost 21-33 (Currie Cup final)

October 26, 2013        Cape Town      Won 33-19 (Currie Cup final)

October 27, 2012        Durban                        Lost 18-25 (Currie Cup final)

July 28, 2012               Cape Town      Won 26-19 (SuperRugby semi-final)

October 30, 2010        Durban                        Won 30-10 (Currie Cup final)

The ability of Ruan Nortje to tear around the rugby field in indefatigable fashion in the heat of summer has been one of the features of the season, but the Bulls lock said on Thursday he was grateful for the Covid-enforced break his team had to take, even though he is well aware and sad for the heartbreak the virus has caused for many.

The Bulls will certainly be relying on Nortje to bring unrelenting work-rate in their Currie Cup semi-final against the Lions in Pretoria next weekend and he is confident he will be firing on all cylinders. The 22-year-old has shown himself to be a player in the same mould as Springbok lock Franco Mostert, who was a key part of the Lions side that dominated local rugby between 2016 and 2018.

“The heat at this time of year definitely gets the better of you sometimes, but thanks to Covid – although I am sad for how much suffering it has caused – I had a really good off time over Christmas with the family, which helped a lot. Now I can prepare well and get my energy right for the semi-finals. I’ve been very blessed with natural fitness, or something like that.

“I’m not sure why I play the way I do, it’s just instinct, it’s how I grew up – just play as hard as possible even though I’m not the biggest guy. When I get on the field, I just want to go. I’m trying to add a bit more meat to my body and our conditioning coach says I mustn’t run as much on my own so I don’t lose weight. But I still run every now and then when I’m off,” Nortje said on Thursday.

And Nortje knows that the focus of the Lions challenge will be up front – in the scrums and lineouts. The Bulls struggled in those departments when they played their Gauteng neighbours last week and were trailing 9-0 after the first quarter. But the pack then stood up and led the SuperRugby Unlocked champions to a 22-15 win and ensured first place on the log and home advantage for the semi-final and final (if they qualify).

“The Lions have a very good scrum and lineout and they will definitely target us in those facets again. So it’s for us to put in the hard work over the next week to counter them. It’s the knockout rounds now so it’s a new game and we’ve put the previous game behind us. The Lions are a very good side, they can beat anyone on their day, so we’ve put a bit more focus on our systems and processes.

“To make the Currie Cup final would mean the world to me. As a little boy, we didn’t have DsTV, so we would go to my grandfather for prime time and watch the Bulls and every final. It was such a special time and I would kick the water bottle around in the garden. I guess I was imagining myself more as a flyhalf back then, kicking the winning penalty goal,” the two-metre, 113kg Wonderboom dynamo said.

“This just reaffirms what I’ve been saying about having a team together for a long time and being able to prepare properly – then you have a chance to win,” was coach Jake White’s response to his makeshift Bulls side being hammered 44-14 by the Pumas in their Currie Cup match in Nelspruit at the weekend.

Given the thoroughly unusual week they had, it was always going to be an uphill task for the youthful Bulls outfit to beat a fired-up Pumas side. Having emerged from their Covid outbreak, the Bulls had to play the Lions in a crucial clash in midweek with a weakened team. But they managed to sneak a win over their Gauteng neighbours, thereby ensuring they would finish top of the log.

They then had to wait 48 hours before they could do Covid testing again, leaving precious little time before Sunday’s match with the Pumas. White was always going to wrap his first-choice players in cotton-wool before their semi-final against the Lions on January 23, but he would have liked more time to prepare the largely U21 side he threw into action at the Mbombela Stadium.

“It was always going to be tough having just one training session together with this team, a guy like replacement flank Divan Venter only trained with us for 20 minutes because Nizaam Carr pulled out on the Friday. We’ve brought much better teams to Nelspruit and struggled, and this was a very new squad. But it’s never nice losing and I did hope for a better performance.

“I was pleased with the 7-10 score in the second half, but it was not ideal to go 31-0 down after the first 25 minutes. But all credit to the Pumas, we wanted to get those early points but they did it to us instead. They’ve been in Lockdown for a long time and made huge sacrifices, so it’s nice for them to get some reward. They should have won against some much better teams than what we brought here this time,” White admitted.

White said the best thing to come out of the game was that here were no injuries and now his team have the better part of two weeks to prepare for the knockout stages. The halfback pairing of Morne Steyn and Ivan van Zyl were probably the only two players who started against the Pumas and are likely to feature in the semi-final, and they were pulled off the field at halftime.

“The most important thing is that we didn’t get any injuries, which is quite nice. I was worried that we would lose one or two players, which is why Elrigh Louw and Johan Grobbelaar didn’t get on and Lizo Gqoboka only had limited time. I wanted to give Morne Steyn some game time and confidence, but two weeks out from a semi-final, you just don’t want the guys to get injured.

“I didn’t want to risk anyone and fortunately there were no injuries. I had still hoped we would be more competitive, like we were in the second half, but you’ve got to pay your school fees and a guy like Jan-Hendrik Wessels maybe lost just one game in his whole Grey College school career. But now we need to win our last two games, we’ve worked hard for a home semi-final and we have not lost at home yet,” White said.