Ken Borland

The Bulls will complete another sad SuperRugby campaign in Pretoria today against the Cheetahs and, by the end of the game, Victor Matfield could be the last person remaining at Loftus Versfeld with any link to the glory days of 2007-2010 when they won the competition three times in four years.

The Bulls confirmed yesterday that the match against the Cheetahs will be the last for captain Pierre Spies and flyhalf Jacques-Louis Potgieter as they join the overseas exodus of players that will also include Jacques du Plessis, Flip van der Merwe and Akona Ndungane, while Francois Hougaard is heading for Japan but negotiations are underway for him to return for next year’s SuperRugby tournament.

Matfield is not playing against the Cheetahs because he is being rested as per the agreement with the Springbok management, but he has already announced that his playing days will be over after the World Cup.

But the veteran lock is bound to be back at Loftus Versfeld in the new year because he is the favourite to replace Frans Ludeke as coach. The man who was behind the 2009 and 2010 wins faced the Bulls board yesterday in a last-ditch attempt to save his job, but unless there was a late change in heart, Ludeke is also on his way out.

So there will be a sombre mood at Loftus Versfeld tonight, made worse by the knowledge that even a Bulls victory will do little to change their fortunes in another season that has fallen way short of expectations.

At least the rugby on offer could provide some entertainment.

New Cheetahs coach Franco Smith is preaching an expansive, linking style of play, while Spies has stressed how determined the Bulls are to end on a high.

“There’s plenty of motivation because we want to end on a high. If we can get five points and finish in the top eight on the log then the picture looks a bit better. We want to play a good attacking brand of rugby and hold on to the ball for a few more phases. There should be plenty of broken-field play and the Cheetahs love that as well,” Spies said.

Putting their bodies on the line in defence is probably not going to rank too high on either side’s list of priorities, but the Bulls should have a slight edge in motivation as they look to avoid a third defeat on home soil this season.

If the Sharks were in any doubt about Griquas presenting them with a tough challenge in their Currie Cup match at Kings Park on Friday night, then the fact that the Northern Cape side have won their last two matches in Durban should dispel any notions of a stroll in the park.

Although the KwaZulu-Natalians beat Griquas 45-20 in Kimberley last year, Griquas won 21-18 at Kings Park in 2014, repeating their 32-30 triumph there in 2013, and Sharks coach Robert du Preez is in no mood for complacency this week.

“Griquas are a very tough side, they’ll be very physical, and we have to bring our A game to beat them,” Du Preez said.

While the Sharks at their best are able to keep ball in hand and stretch most defences, it will be up front in the trenches where Friday night’s game will be won or lost.

“We’re looking to keep ball-in-hand for longer and play more rugby, but the forwards need to create the space on the outside, they need to be direct and dominate contact. You have to earn the right to go wide.

“Griquas are always gutsy, they did well in the qualifiers and I think we’re up for a hard game. They’ll come out and play good rugby, with a lot of energy running on to the ball. They enjoy playing with the ball, they’re unpredictable and they also have their maul and their direct forward play,” loose forward Philip van der Walt said.

Griquas were the leading qualifiers from the preliminary stage, with 11 wins in 14 games, but the whole EP Kings saga has hampered the momentum they would have wanted to take into the Premier Division.

They were originally going to play the Kings in last weekend’s opening round of fixtues, but then it was going to be the Leopards and then they ended up eventually having a bye.

“It has been an unbelievably frustrating couple of weeks, it’s been difficult. We have been doing analysis on three different teams, focused training with a team picked to play the Leopards and then we did not even have a game last week. Some key players were rested for the last game of the qualifiers and the result is some players have not played for over four weeks!

“Mentally it has been difficult and after finishing as the first qualifiers we did not expect this, but we have been training hard, we refocused and will ensure we give everything to make our supporters proud of Griquas,” Peter Engledow, the coach of Griquas, told the side’s website.

South Africa’s number one women’s golfer, Lee-Anne Pace, on Tuesday cruised to her third Sunshine Ladies Tour title, and second in succession, when she won the Tshwane Open at Pretoria Country Club and she will now use this weekend’s Investec Cup for Ladies to fine-tune her game ahead of her return to the United States and the first major of the year.

Pace has played three of the events on the Sunshine Ladies Tour this summer and won all of them, which has seen her motor up the Chase to the Investec Cup for Ladies standings to third, giving her an excellent chance of defending her title at the limited-field season-finale at Millvale and the Lost City this weekend.

The 34-year-old Pace said on Tuesday at the Investec Cup draw that this weekend’s chase for the R600 000 bonus pool will be the perfect cap for her preparations for the ANA Inspiration, the first women’s major, starting on April 2 at the famous Mission Hills Country Club in California.

“I’ve gained a lot of confidence from these last couple of weeks in South Africa, I’ve been striking the ball really well and I feel a lot more ready for the majors because I’ve been competing. This time last year I hadn’t played nearly as much and especially winning, no other feeling compares to that and hopefully I can carry that into the majors,” Pace told The Citizen on Tuesday.

The world number 31’s willingness to forego competition overseas and play in South Africa shows just what great strides the Sunshine Ladies Tour has taken.

“There’s been a lot more exposure and interest this year and a lot more players competing, including a couple from England. Hopefully they can get the word out and, with such good sponsors on board like Investec, hopefully the tour can get even bigger, maybe have some co-sanctioned events like the men,” Pace said.

Sunshine Tour executive director Selwyn Nathan said the success of the Sunshine Ladies Tour had surpassed expectations.

“The growth of the women’s tour has been unbelievable, even though it is still a work in progress. This tour is going to grow and we have fantastic plans for it. It’s been an absolute success and sponsors, fans and social media interest have all grown.

“And the appreciation from the women golfers has been amazing, there’s not been one tournament where the sponsors have received less than 30 letters of thanks from the players, and that’s from fields of less than 50,” Nathan said.

Pretoria Country Club will differ greatly from the Copperleaf course he won the title on last year, but Englishman Ross Fisher will be the favourite when the co-sanctioned Tshwane Open starts this morning at the parklands course in Waterkloof.

Fisher is the second highest-ranked golfer in the field at 66^th in the world rankings, behind compatriot Andy Sullivan (57^th), so he has the pedigree; and he certainly has the form judging by his lofty third position in the European Tour’s Race to Dubai.

The lanky 34-year-old comes to Pretoria fresh off a tie for 23^rd in the lucrative WGC Cadillac Championship at Doral, where he finished with three rounds of par or better, so Fisher is in a good frame of mind.

“It’s a very different course, a lot shorter and more fiddly, there’s a lot of positional play off the tees so you’re hitting a lot of irons and not many drivers. I prefer quite long and tight courses because driver is my strength, but it’s been a very good start to the season. Finishing second at Sun City was a great start, I had a decent three weeks in the desert and I’m really pleased I came back well at Doral.

“This course should be easier because the winds were pretty strong and there was a lot of water at Doral, but there’s still trouble out there. But I’ve come up with my own game plan, being strategic is going to play a critical role,” Fisher said yesterday.

The former Ryder Cup player’s namesake, Trevor Fisher Junior, is still recovering from his breakthrough win last weekend at the Africa Open in East London, but the South African is determined to not rest on that triumph.

“I’m still on a high, but it’s been tough with all the calls and messages and with all the excitement I’ve hardly slept. But last week is now in the past and I just want to get out on to the first tee and play. I don’t want to get comfortable, I want to try and win again as soon as possible,” Fisher Junior said.

“If it will take a week or 10 months, I don’t know. There are such small margins in golf,” he said before using his own poor form at the Dimension Data Pro-Am, where he shot 74-69-78-76, two weeks prior to East London, as an illustration.

That will give hope to George Coetzee, who is playing on his home course, but admits he doesn’t know whether he is going “to play well or badly until the first tee on Thursday”.