Ken Borland

Bulls coach Nollis Marais said he was not happy about the bonus point which eluded his team despite their convincing 41-22 victory over the Reds at Loftus Versfeld at the weekend.

The Bulls were leading 27-8 after 50 minutes, but conceded two quick tries to powerful Reds centre Samu Kerevi, and, although they finished with five tries, they ended one short of the bonus point, losing the throw at a lineout five metres from the opposition tryline after the final hooter.

“I wasn’t happy that we didn’t get the bonus point, we should have used that lineout at the end. We got back in the game after they scored an excellent try up front, but at certain stages there was too much individual play. At halftime we said we must stick to the structures and let the ball do the work, not the man. We weren’t accurate enough,” Marais said after the win, which kept them up with the leaders in the South African Group.

“But we are getting better every week. We played for seven years with the same style here and now we’re trying something different, even though it might not always look like it. Previously guys would just tuck the ball under the arm and go straight for the opposition, but guys like Jan Serfontein and Jesse Kriel are now moving the ball.

“It’s a game plan which the Lions are a couple of years down the line with, but we must stick to that – it’s important to see the space,” Marais said.

The Bulls now have a bye before going on tour to Australia and both Marais and captain Adriaan Strauss warned that it is not going to get any easier as they try to nail down a playoff spot.

“We are a process-driven team and we’re not where we want to be, but we’ll take a win any day. It was a good win, but we are chasing high standards, the perfect game, so we mustn’t get ahead of ourselves.

“It’s definitely not going to get any easier, especially on tour. We’ll enjoy the win and the week off, but then we need to focus 100% on the Force, which will be a tough challenge,” Strauss said.

“To have our two byes so early is a challenge, I would have liked one after the tour. But now the weekend after we come back from tour, we play the Stormers here. So that’s going to be a big challenge and we need to make sure the guys are rested enough,” Marais added.

Although I would have liked to have seen some big-name overseas input in the management team, in Allister Coetzee the Springboks have a coach who is vastly experienced, has excellent man-management skills and will avoid the transformation pitfalls that plagued his predecessor, which is vital in this country.

Coetzee was a strong contender for the post way back in 2008, but those were the days when Cheeky Watson held powerful sway in South African rugby and the disgraced Eastern Province president was firmly in the Peter de Villiers camp.

In a way, I’m actually quite pleased now that Coetzee did not get the job straight after he had been part of Jake White’s management team that won the World Cup in 2007. The former scrumhalf star has spent the last eight years gaining more and more experience, to the extent that of all the Springbok coaches appointed since 1992, he has the most experience of them all.

Early coaches like John Williams, Ian McIntosh and Kitch Christie had no international background, while Andre Markgraaff and Carel du Plessis had not coached at SuperRugby level. Nick Mallett, Harry Viljoen and Rudolf Straeuli had experience in that competition, but were not part of successful Springbok management teams before their promotion.

White and De Villiers both won the junior world cup but had never been head coach of a SuperRugby franchise, while Heyneke Meyer had success with the Bulls but only a little involvement with Springbok teams.

Critics of Coetzee point to the dour style of rugby he played in making four SuperRugby playoffs, winning the South African Conference three times and claiming two Currie Cup titles, but it’s important to look at that in context.

When he took over an ailing Stormers in 2010, the then laws of the game favoured teams that played territory and could defend well, at times the less ball you had the better. Think of how well the Springboks did around that time and what sort of rugby they played, beating the All Blacks five times between 2008 and 2011.

Of course, as the laws changed, Coetzee said he tried to make sure the Stormers’ play evolved as well, but it was not as easy as just applying a new lick of paint.

Players who have worked with Coetzee – and not just with the Stormers, Fourie du Preez for instance – have the utmost respect for his ability as a coach. The 52-year-old will have the attacking and skills input of Mzwandile Stick, one of the best Sevens players this country has ever produced and obviously a talented coach in his own right given that he steered Eastern Province to the U19 Currie Cup title.

In terms of an overseas appointment, Saru probably don’t have the money and the top overseas names probably don’t have the inclination or the inside knowledge to get involved in the murky politics of our rugby, so local will have to be lekker for now. CEO Jurie Roux said Coetzee is welcome to call in any short-term consultants he requires.

Much has been made of Saru’s goal of making the Springbok team 50% representative by the next World Cup and Coetzee said it shouldn’t be an issue for him. He managed to field a transformed Stormers side and keep winning at the same time.

The talent is there to fulfil any quotas, but if Coetzee does run into problems now and then in terms of balancing his side, at least nobody is going to call him a racist as Watson once tried to imply.

The Springbok coaching reins have undoubtedly been handed to the right man, although an efficient organisation would have given Coetzee much more time to prepare for a tough debut when Ireland come to these shores in June.

All the critics are going to town on Russell Domingo following yet another Proteas failure at a world cup, but the coach himself is defiant that he should not be drummed out of his position at the helm of South Africa’s cricket team.

“I wouldn’t say our form has been bad for 18 months, it’s just the last four or five months, since the India Tests. The ODIs against India were good and the ODIs and T20s against England were good.

“We just did not play the big moments well enough. But my opinion is that our preparation was outstanding, spot on, I can assure you everyone worked extremely hard, we were meticulous in our planning and strategising. It’s part of my job, absolutely, to try and make it happen, to make it all come together, and my impression is that the team does buy into my approach.

“Of course I want to continue in my job and I will just work hard and try and get the best out of the players. I have a good relationship with them and in my opinion our management team is as good as anything in the world,” Domingo said.

South Africa’s premature exit at the ICC World T20 is now the subject of a Cricket South Africa review and CEO Haroon Lorgat, who has previously been a solid backer of Domingo, stopped short of giving him unqualified support. Six months ago, Domingo received a contract extension through to the end of April next year from CSA.

Whether CSA will be satisfied with Domingo eking out results until then remains to be seen, but the man in the firing line does not feel he should go.

“The margins in international cricket are very small and there’s just a tiny difference in making the semi-finals or not. Look at India getting out of jail against Bangladesh. There will always be questions after you fall out of an event like that, but small things just didn’t go for us,” Domingo said.

It was hardly confidential that the Bulls were vulnerable in the scrums when they opened their SuperRugby campaign against the Stormers at Newlands, but captain Adriaan Strauss was nevertheless disappointed that his team gave their hosts so much opportunity to dominate that set-piece as they romped to an impressive 33-9 victory.

“The Stormers scrummed well in the second half and we also struggled against the Lions in the latter part of that warm-up game. There are technical things we need to work on and improve, but the coach said before the game that scrummaging would be our challenge and that’s precisely where the Stormers took us on and they won that battle.

“But we didn’t give them that opportunity in the first half, it was a tactical game, there wasn’t much space, a typical, hard South African derby. The Stormers took their opportunities in the second half but we gave them some of those. It’s frustrating because I know the side has got potential, like we showed in the first half, but then we didn’t play to our ability in the second half. Credit to the Stormers for playing very well, but we made silly mistakes at the lineouts and we didn’t apply pressure, giving them easy exits,” hooker Strauss said after the game.

Bulls coach Nollis Marais hinted that the true valuation of his side will only come further down the line, perhaps not even during this year’s SuperRugby competition.

“The match showed how young and inexperienced we are in certain positions. But we need to play these youngsters, they’ll get better every week and will be ready down the line. Otherwise two years from now we will have the same problem. It’s not nice, but we have to stick with it and the guys have to learn. A match like that is not fun, but it’s a good way to learn and the team will grow every week,” Marais said.

“The big question mark was always going to be whether we were under pressure in the set-pieces and the Stormers did that to us in the second half. Eben Etzebeth and Pieter-Steph du Toit showed their class in the lineouts and they had very good substitutions in the scrum. If you don’t win your set-pieces, you can have thousands of plans, but without good scrum or lineout ball, you can’t attack,” the coach added.