Ken Borland

Bulls coach Jake White said whether he was right or wrong to rest his first-choice players from European Champions Cup action and then they still lost to the Stormers in their United Rugby Championship derby in Cape Town is only going to be decided at the end of the season.

Despite bringing a fresh, best-available team to Cape Town to tackle the defending champions, the Bulls were humbled 37-27, allowing critics to wonder whether it was worth sending the second-stringers to Devon last weekend and being soundly beaten by Exeter Chiefs.

“We have five points from two games in the Champions Cup, both us and the Stormers do,” White pointed out. “The decision had nothing to do about today, it was not a measure of whether I was right or wrong.

“We will only measure that by June next year. There was no way the same team could play today after flying 26 hours in economy and only arriving back Monday lunchtime.

“We’ve lost four times in a row now to the Stormers, but we will see in June when we have three competitions on the go. If I was only concerned with European competition then maybe I would have done things differently.

“But my brief as director of rugby comes from a decision made by the board. Next year’s Currie Cup will be played Wednesday-Saturday-Saturday, which is a helluva ask. Plus we only have eight training days in January because of the travel,” White said.

The former Springbok coach said the naivety of his team was a concern, putting it down to inexperience.

“It didn’t help playing 20 minutes with 14 guys, but we showed moments of inexperience, which was disappointing,” White said. “There were four minutes of madness when they scored three of their four tries.

“You can’t say you should have won when you’ve conceded four tries, but our attack was held up on the Stormers’ line a couple of times. The Stormers really stormed the breakdown.

“They would rather concede penalties than the try, and defence coach Norman Laker has been there a long time. In fact their whole coaching staff has been there a long time, so they are much more fluent.

“I don’t enjoy losing, but it’s a complete and utter juggling act at the moment. We are still young, every player in the Stormers pack is older than his Bulls counterpart. We have six guys who are 23 or younger,” White said.

Five South Africans are going to be teeing it up at the Masters tournament at Augusta from Thursday, but the bad news is that all but one of them have been going in the wrong direction in the world rankings and will be entering the first, and arguably most prestigious, Major of the year without good form behind them.

Erik van Rooyen is the South African golfer enjoying the best year thus far, playing with reasonable consistency to move from 65^th in the rankings at the start of the year to 62^nd at present, with five top-30 finishes in eight tournaments. His best performance came in the Dubai Desert Classic when he tied for fourth, so he at least carries some momentum into the tournament and is considered a dark horse in some quarters, even with that weird facial hair.

Louis Oosthuizen is always the South African golfer who attracts the most attention, especially given his stellar record in Majors, but this week he will be having more eyes than ever in his general direction because he is going to be playing in the same three-ball as Tiger Woods, who is making a dramatic return to golf following his serious car accident 14 months ago in which he suffered serious leg injuries.

Oosthuizen is typically under-the-radar leading into Majors, and has slipped from 13^th to 15^th in the world, with two top-30 finishes in only five events. But South Africa’s highest-ranked golfer had an outstanding 2021 in the Majors, finishing tied-third, second, tied-second and tied-26^th in the Masters. He was the runner-up at Augusta in 2012, famously won by Bubba Watson.

Charl Schwartzel is another former champion who is going to be playing this week, but the 2011 winner has dropped to 169^th in the world rankings and has missed the cut in his last six tournaments. He did, however, finish third in the 2017 Masters.

Garrick Higgo is another South African who is hoping to overcome a run of bad form as he has missed his last three cuts. In fact he has not finished in the top-20 since his breakthrough win at the Palmetto Championship last year.

The fifth South African, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, is at least going to the Masters with some reasonable form behind him, finishing in the top-30 four times in nine events this year. He made the cut in both his previous starts at Augusta.

Scottie Scheffler is the new No.1 golfer in the world and the hottest competitor coming in, but he will be challenged strongly in the tipping stakes by Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas and Brooks Koepka.

Cameron Smith and Xander Schauffele are dark horses in the 90-stroing field, while one can never discount Dustin Johnson.

Coming after their impressive ODI series win over South Africa, the opening day of the Test series was a tough one for Bangladesh as they probably made the wrong decision at the toss by sending the Proteas in to bat and then bowled poorly in the morning session to compound the mistake.

Openers Dean Elgar (67) and Sarel Erwee (41) added 113 for the first wicket, before Bangladesh fought back in the afternoon to reduce the hosts to 180/4. But Temba Bavuma (53*) and Kyle Verreynne (27*) then made sure it was South Africa’s day at Kingsmead as they added an unbeaten 53 to take the Proteas to 233/4 at stumps.

Bangladesh coach Russell Domingo admitted a lack of confidence in batting first and an inexperienced attack was the cause of their woes. Pacemen Taskin Ahmed, Ebadot Hossain and Khaled Ahmed only have 25 Test caps between them.

“We’re still trying to improve our Test cricket and there is still a bit of uncertainty over our batting on pitches with pace and bounce, that was behind the decision to bowl first,” Domingo revealed on Thursday evening.

“We’re trying to address the confidence of the batsmen so they are able to front up when batting first on wickets that are tough. There was not too much in the decision and it would have been nice to actually start at 10am because the delay meant the clouds had burned off.

“A few of the batsmen are playing their first Test here and we’re trying to get them to have confidence in their ability, but there’s still a long way to go.

“We also have a very inexperienced attack and we bowled poorly in the first session. Obviously the guys were a bit nervous or over-eager, on a pitch they thought would assist them. But we were much better after lunch,” Domingo said.

The Bangladesh attack did clearly miss left-arm quick Shoriful Islam, one of the stars of the ODI series.

“Shoriful is injured, he has an ankle niggle which is why he missed selection, and is back is troubling him too,” Domingo revealed. “With only four bowlers, we could not risk one who was 50/50.

“The pitch has not done as much as we thought it would, but Khaled ran in hard, he bowled one ball at 150km/h and his attitude was fantastic. He showed good pace and control.

“We kept it nice and tight in the last session and the new ball is just four overs away. Obviously it will be fantastic if we can get one or two early wickets with it.

“If we can keep the Proteas to around 320 then we’re very much in the contest,” Domingo, a former South Africa coach, said.

South Africa’s director of rugby Rassie Erasmus posted a classic put-down on social media before the series against the British and Irish Lions about a lion not concerning himself when a sheep offers an opinion. Despite the Springboks proving those naysayers wrong with their brilliant effort to win the series, the critics somehow remain.

The bitter losers up north have been complaining non-stop about the ‘boring’ style of play of the Springboks, forgetting that it was the Lions who set the tone for the series when they dominated the second half of the first Test through their kicking game and driving maul.  Australasian critics have deliberately ignored the massive intensity and physicality of the series by saying the rugby was boring; maybe for the neutral, but certainly not for the supporters of the two teams.

Erasmus himself has been roundly criticised, and charged with misconduct by WorldRugby, for his video expose’ of refereeing mistakes in the first Test. Again, it has been forgotten that Lions coach Warren Gatland started that war by disgracefully questioning the integrity of a South African TMO who had to fill in at late notice due to Covid travel restrictions. Gatland denies doing this, but how did multiple British journalists have the same story? There is no doubt it was a calculated strategy to put pressure on the TMO, and Erasmus responded in kind a week later.

Rugby at that level is often brutal and the mind-games and off-the-field tactics are not for the fainthearted either. It is just a game, but we are not talking about hugging fluffy bunnies here – the Lions brought a manic determination to win at all costs and the Springboks were also extremely fired up to prove themselves and also bring some happiness to a society that was fraying around more than just the edges.

It was all very reminiscent of the 2009 Lions series. The tourists brought the same streetfighting attitude and had the same backing from their embedded one-eyed media. It brought out the best in the South African management, although Rassie’s video was probably not his finest moment.

But what Erasmus achieved was the same as what 2009 Springbok coach Peter de Villiers ensured. Following a predictable outcry from the touring media about dirty play by the Springboks, De Villiers took all the pressure off the players by making himself the lightning rod for all the attention with his comments about putting on tutus and doing ballet.

The players loved Snor for that and it was one of the prime examples of what a good man-manager he was. Erasmus did the same ahead of the crucial second Test, allowing the Springboks to produce one of their greatest second-half displays.

From the high point of 2009, when the Springboks also won the Tri-Nations Championship, their fortunes began to drop off, culminating in their nightmare years of 2016 and 2017. And then Erasmus arrived to give the Springboks their meds … turns out there was nothing wrong with their bodies, it was all in their heads.

Following the triumphs of 2007 and 2009, the same old chorus of boring Springboks echoed around the rugby landscape and, unfortunately, we listened. The Springboks must play more like the All Blacks, was the consensus. And we believed the narrative, which was always meant to take the Springboks away from their strengths. No-one can copy the All Blacks, that is their own, brilliant style, forged in their rugby-DNA.

The All Blacks now loom large in the Rugby Championship and I am sure the Springboks, rapidly regaining their confidence and peak conditioning, are not going to be distracted by the many words being published which are somehow trying to belittle their remarkable achievements.

By many accounts, the All Blacks were fortunate to win their last meeting, in the opening game of the 2019 World Cup, and since then they have lost record-breaking coach Steve Hansen and great players such as Ryan Crotty, Sonny Bill Williams, Ben Smith and Kieran Read.

This is not the same imperious New Zealand team and, although they are trying to rediscover the same high-intensity, high-tempo game as before, they have been spluttering over the last couple of years. And the ferocious Springbok defence, set-piece excellence and strong kicking game is a rather large obstacle for them to overcome.

No wonder they want the Springboks to change the way they play.