Ken Borland

“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.

It is certainly part of Proteas coach Mark Boucher’s mandate to ensure a steady flow of youngsters come through and perform at international level, but his No.1 priority is for South Africa to have a winning cricket team, hence his decision to stick with veteran former captain Faf du Plessis, a move which was thoroughly justified in the first Test against Sri Lanka.

The 36-year-old Du Plessis scored a magnificent, career-best 199, an innings which began under pressure with South Africa slipping from 200 for two when he came to the crease, to 220 for four. Thanks to the class and skill of Du Plessis, and the help of the lower-middle order, the Proteas were able to post 621, setting up an innings win that seemed most unlikely when Sri Lanka scored 396 batting first. It was the third highest first innings total South Africa have conceded in a Test they have gone on to win.

There is no doubt a rebuilding Proteas team thoroughly enjoy having the cool, calm wisdom of Du Plessis still around. Not least of all the new captain, Quinton de Kock.

“It’s important to have senior guys with experience. People always talk about youngsters coming through but you need a balance. Faf really showed his experience, you need that under pressure, he showed his leadership and how to handle the pressure because he’s been through those situations many times before,” De Kock said after the first Test.

“It helps me too to have good leaders in the team and although I’ve never captained a team before in first-class cricket, I have stood next to Faf for most of my Test career so I very much knew what the captaincy was about.”

Boucher, who has taken a lot of flak in the last year for sticking with his former captain, described the presence of Du Plessis as being like “gold dust”.

“I know what Faf is worth, I understand what he has done for South Africa. He’s a great player who went through a bit of a dip in form but his place was never under pressure for me. You need experience and he showed that in this game. He did very good work over the Covid Lockdown period on his technique and he looks very comfortable at the crease now.

“He really wanted to score big runs and he is gold dust to us. It’s nice to have him in such good form and good spirits. We’re going to need him in the big series coming up,” Boucher said after the Centurion triumph.

After the Test series loss to England at the start of 2020, I wrote a column [https://citizen.co.za/sport/sport-columnists/2236293/dont-savage-faf-yet-he-had-a-lot-of-external-issues-to-deal-with/] asking where Du Plessis fitted in in the future red-ball plans of the Proteas. I said the only question I would ask Faf before selecting him for the team would be “Are you still enjoying your cricket?”

The sheer hunger Du Plessis has shown in getting as fit as he has ever been over Lockdown and continuing to work on improving his game are all the proof one needs to know that South Africa’s ninth highest Test run-getter is still loving the sport.

“The Lockdown really helped, mentally it allowed me to freshen up, but I also knew I could control how fit I was. People say I’m at the end of my career but it depends on how good your body is, how fit you are is much more important than your age. So I really pushed myself, I may be 36 but I feel fitter than ever before, I’m moving better now than when I was 23/24. Now the younger guys must stay with me.

“I’ve definitely scored hundreds against better attacks and in hotter conditions and match situations, so this innings was not close to some of those. But from a timing and statement point of view it showed those who doubt my ability that nothing has changed and I am still trying to improve,” Du Plessis said after his 199.

The last part of that sentence – “I am still trying to improve” – is the clincher: the still-hungry Du Plessis should be part of the Test team for the foreseeable future and the often wonky South African batting line-up will definitely reap the benefits of having the man for all situations there.

Sharks coach Sean Everitt admitted that his team still has plenty of work to do on their efforts in the tight-loose, despite their comfortable winning margin of 42-19 over the Pumas in Nelspruit at the weekend.

The Pumas were typically robust and confrontational up front, but where the Sharks had a decided edge was in terms of their clinical finishing, and the sharpness of both their backline and the rolling maul. But were it not for the Pumas being extremely wasteful on several occasions when they were inside the Sharks’ 22, the match would have been a lot closer.

“We’re very happy with the result, especially since last year we lost here, and we showed a lot of energy for the full 80 minutes, but the breakdowns let us down and that still needs a lot of attention. Francois Klelinhans and Jeandre Rudolph are both very good on the ball, but we need to tidy that area up,” Everitt said.

Not that the Sharks coach was upset with his forwards though, because there were areas where they played much better than last weekend against the Bulls in Pretoria, and the Sharks were expert at mining that front-foot ball and turning it into gold.

“There were obviously things we worked on after the Bulls game and it was great to see the set-piece come through – we were rewarded for some good scrums and we didn’t lose a lineout. Plus our maul was really good and led to two tries for us,” Everitt said.

“We are adapting well to the different interpretations at the breakdown,” Bulls consultant Nollis Marais said on Monday in respect of the journey the team has taken from initial teething problems in the rucks to it now being a strength of the juggernaut side who are now six points clear at the top of the SuperRugby Unlocked log.

Marais is the breakdown specialist on Jake White’s coaching staff and he admitted that it has not been an easy area to perfect so far this season.

“There have been different interpretations at the breakdown and we do a lot of research into what the different referees want and try and prepare the players for that. We’re getting quite good guidelines from the referees who assist us and I think the breakdown should just get better and better and by the second half of the competition we should be certain of what we’re doing.

“We adapted well to what referee AJ Jacobs wanted at the weekend, we conceded a couple of penalties early on against the Stormers and we knew it would be a physical battle at the breakdown because Steven Kitshoff and Jaco Coetzee like to go hard in trying to get the ball. But our plan worked and by the end of the game we were winning the penalties,” Marais said.

The Bulls are currently ranked as the top team in the competition in terms of turnovers won, and that has largely been due to the outstanding efforts of Duane Vermeulen and Marco van Staden, although Marais did point out contesting ball at the breakdowns is something every player is expected to contribute towards.

“The breakdown is all about team-work, from number one to 15, the whole team is drilled in that area and even Travis Ismaiel and Stedman Gans were involved in turnovers against the Stormers. But every week Marco does a review of the clips with me and at first he tended to chase every ruck, but now he gets better reads and is getting better and better at deciding when to try and steal the ball and when not to steal.

“As far as Duane goes, well you just can’t move Thor, can you? You need 15 players to move Thor. If Duane is at a breakdown then I know we’re going to get a penalty,” Marais said.

The Bulls are now preparing for a different breakdown challenge against the Lions at Ellis Park on Saturday night.

“The Lions want to play quickly, so we have to try and make their ball slower. They can be very physical too, but then they’re just trying to make the game quicker all the time. So it’s very important that we don’t allow them quick ball,” Marais said.