Ken Borland

Captain Marcell Coetzee will go to Japan after leading the Bulls against one of his former teams, the Sharks, in Pretoria on Sunday, but he assured on Wednesday that he will be back to resume his crucial role in the Loftus Versfeld community.

“This weekend is my last match for the Bulls this year, and I will be back at the back end of April or the first week of May,” Coetzee confirmed. “It’s a big opportunity for me in Japan with Kobe.

“But the positive is that I know I’m coming back, I missed my country too much during my five years with Ulster. It’s an honour playing for the Bulls and my home is in Pretoria, that’s where my heart definitely is.

“My rugby career started at the Sharks, they gave me a gap and were very good to me. But time moves on. And I’m very happy where I am with the Bulls, the staff and the team spirit we have built up.

“There’s lots of history between the Bulls and the Sharks, so it’s always a very physical battle. It’s going to be tough, even without their Springboks, a titanic struggle,” Coetzee said.

While one can never criticise a 31-year-old player for chasing a lucrative deal like this Japanese sojourn, and the Bulls are happy to treat it as a sabbatical for a player who they recently contracted until 2026, Coetzee hopes he will also come back a different player.

“In 2015 I spent three months in Japan with Honda Heat and my skill-set really improved,” the Springbok with 31 Test caps said. “So I’ll be looking to develop certain things while I’m there.

“They play very high-tempo rugby in Japan and you run a lot. The URC is getting quicker as well, especially when you play against the Irish and Scottish teams.

“The move will hopefully keep me on my toes because there are a lot of loosies coming through,” Coetzee said.

But for now, Coetzee’s focus will be on chasing the ball at the breakdown, as he did so brilliantly in the Bulls’ much-needed win over Benetton in Treviso last weekend.

“How the game has developed, teams put a lot of pressure on the breakdown, especially the UK teams, because you’re trying to eliminate the tempo of the opposition.

“We are blessed to have a few guys who make good decisions there – Marco van Staden, Bismarck du Plessis and a couple of backs.

“Against Benetton, we were firing shots and eventually the dam wall broke because we were able to implement our quick tempo game and we got a bonus point.

“We need to show the same patience against the Sharks, put pressure on them. We have to really show up because we can’t just rely on home ground advantage,” Coetzee said.

Proteas coach Mark Boucher said it is the officials who make the decisions and the teams have to live with them after their opening T20 World Cup match against Zimbabwe was called off with South Africa on the brink of victory at the Bellerive Oval in Hobart on Monday.

South Africa, inspired by an extraordinary Quinton de Kock innings, were 51/0 after just three overs, needing only 13 more runs in four overs to win the match. Rain after the toss had seen the match reduced to nine overs a side, Zimbabwe electing to bat first and scoring 79/5, with the game being reduced by two more overs in the second over of the Proteas chase after the rain returned.

Much of the match was played in a steady drizzle, but the umpires eventually ended the contest when the rain became harder and Zimbabwe were starting to voice their displeasure about slipping around on the field. Bowler Richard Ngarava had already left the field with what looked like a twisted ankle, and Zimbabwe coach David Houghton said he didn’t believe a ball should have been bowled.

“They were tough conditions, but we are here to play in the World Cup, we wanted to play and it seemed both captains did,” Boucher said after the No Result.

“The officials are there though to make those decisions and we have to live with it. We bowled with a ball that was quite wet as well.

“We were in a very good position, so we can walk away thinking we were hard done by. If Zimbabwe had been in our position, they would have wanted to play on.

“The positive is that it wasn’t a do-or-die game, we are still in control of our destiny. We’re in a tough group, but it is still very early in the competition. We’ve possibly got to win every game now,” Boucher said.

While the Proteas will mourn the loss of a point, Boucher was delighted by the positive, energetic start his team made to the tournament. None more so than De Kock, who blazed 47 not out off just 18 balls, with eight fours and a six.

“It’s disappointing to get four-fifths of the way through the game and then have to go off,” Boucher said. “To get so close and have it taken away from you, that’s the most frustrating part.

“But rather now than later and I’m just happy with the intensity they showed in the field and Quinny played some special shots, which I think sends a message as well.

“He showed that he is one of the most dangerous batsmen in the world and to see him play with that freedom was really good. Sometimes guys tense up at a World Cup, but he seized the moment.

“There’s not much more we could have done, we maximised what we could. So we have no regrets over what we did, we just needed ten more balls to finish it off,” Boucher said.

Have opposing teams in the United Rugby Championship finally found ways of nullifying the physical threat posed by the Bulls, or are last season’s losing finalists just nowhere near their best at the moment?

This was the question dominating discussion among Bulls watchers as they slipped to successive defeats away to the Glasgow Warriors and Munster, sliding down to sixth place on the log before Friday’s night tricky fixture against Benetton in Treviso.

The answer, as it often is, is probably a bit of both.

Coach Jake White admitted this week that “for whatever reason, we have not played as well as we can. Sometimes it feels like we are stuck in third gear and we struggle to get into fifth.”

But he also made the salient point that it is still early days in the URC and the Bulls’ focus is on playing their best rugby in the last three weeks – the quarterfinals, semi-finals and final in May next year.

It is also worth noting his reminder that the Bulls were in a far worse position this time last season, winning just one of their first five matches. They were all away from home though, in an extremely tough draw, and the Bulls made it five losses from six games when they were then beaten by the Stormers at home. But in the end they still managed to make the final and, in fact, were only one win away from finishing second on the log.

But the Bulls have been exposed a bit in the physicality stakes, with both Glasgow and Munster dominating the collisions, as well as other aspects of play. It has long been accepted in rugby that games are won by the forwards and the backs decide by how much.

Although White bristles at suggestions that his team has been outmuscled, he has also been going on for the last two years at least about how young his squad is, which is a key factor.

Both the Glasgow and Munster packs were full of 30-year-olds who have been in the rugby trenches for a decade. They are mature men, experienced and streetwise.

There is a lovely word in Afrikaans that describes these yeoman forwards that every team needs to do the hard graft, the ugly work – these are the haardebaarde, literally translated as the ‘tough beards’.

White said he wanted more ‘menere’ in his team, saying the Bulls are currently “overloaded with juniors”.

As brilliant as they have been, Steenekamp, Wessels, Mornay Smith, Matanzima, Grobbelaar, Louw, Swanepoel, Nortje, Uys and Steenkamp are all no older than 25, and it should not be a surprise when wiser and more mature forwards get the better of them.

White has said that the age profile of the Bulls, but also the Lions and to some extent the Stormers, is wrong – they do not have enough of those middle-aged players between the ages of 27 and 30, when they are at their peak.

The blame for that can be laid on the economic situation of the country which has allowed overseas clubs to cause bad damage to our teams by taking advantage of the weakness of the Rand and cherry-picking the best talent.

The Sharks have managed to counter that talent-drain through equity partners and strong leadership at board level, while the Bulls are committed to a long-term plan of rebuilding their strength and are also benefiting from excellent investors and the great work of their CEO Edgar Rathbone and union president Willem Strauss.

One can only congratulate John Dobson and the Stormers for managing to get the absolute best out of their talent given the fact that the union was basically bankrupt, and it is going to be thrilling to watch the current Lions side grow and develop, given how well those youngsters are playing this season.

But imagine how much more depth all our sides would have if we could bring that 27-30 age cohort back to South Africa?

All eight Division One teams have arrived in Potchefstroom for the start of their season, with the CSA T20 Challenge kicking off proceedings in a season that will be all about avoiding relegation for those sides that struggled in the first campaign under the new dispensation of province-based teams in two divisions.

The Central Gauteng Lions fared poorly in the T20 tournament last season, finishing second-last. But their triumph in the One-Day Cup and their third-place finish in a Four-Day Series they led for most of the time, means they should not be in danger of relegation. Certainly not with the quality of players they have brought to Potchefstroom.

For coach Wandile Gwavu, it is all about playing with freedom.

“We were definitely not happy with last season’s T20, especially the way we batted. Yes, conditions were challenging, but the brand of cricket we want to play means we must play freely.

“But we never got ourselves into position to do that. We also don’t have enough depth in terms of boundary-hitters, we don’t have enough power batsmen.

“And spin bowlers, we need guys who can bowl in the middle overs and take wickets. In terms of the death, we have some of the best bowlers in the country.

“But if you look at our performances, they were definitely not where they were supposed to be. We have some really good T20 players, but not getting good starts means there is real pressure on the middle-order,” Gwavu said.

The availability of Ryan Rickelton and the acquisition of aggressive opener Cameron Delport should sort out the starts, while the Lions have an exciting middle-order combination of Mitchell van Buuren and Evan Jones, whose growing reputation as a big-hitter – and he can bowl a bit – was shown by the bidding war at the SA20 Auction which saw the Paarl Royals purchase the 26-year-old for R1.7 million.

The bowling revolves around quality seamers in Sisanda Magala, Wiaan Mulder, Malusi Siboto, Codi Yusuf and Lutho Sipamla.

Gwavu said he hopes the pitches in Potchefstroom provide the pace for both them and batsmen to thrive.

“People want to watch good cricket and I don’t think T20 should be played on spinning pitches. The past two seasons have been very challenging for that, and we’ve had a lot of growth in learning how to bat on those wickets.

“But we played some warm-up games in Potch and if the conditions are the same then I think it will be very exciting cricket. There was also no better prep than going to Windhoek and winning that competition.

“Bowlers and batsmen trying to hit you is the best preparation you can get and we took a lot out of that,” Gwavu said.

The KZN Dolphins and the Northerns Titans get the tournament underway on Monday at 2.30pm, followed by the Lions taking on the hosts, North-West, at 6pm.