By Vince Pienaar
➤ Bulls coach, Jake White, probably doesn’t enjoy being called “the wily old fox” but this week he certainly lived up to that nickname by beating the Stormers in every phase of the game.
To be honest, Jake White fooled most people earlier in the week, when he said his focus was on winning the United Rugby Championship. It certainly sounded like an advanced excuse for losing.
Whether John Dobson, a brilliant coach in any company, fell into that trap or not, there was nothing he could do when the Bulls took the power game to another level — and then outplayed the much vaunted Stormers backline in open play as well.
The Stormers turned down at least five kickable penalties to go for the corner flag. That’s about 15 (or more) points that they left lying on the table in the hope that they could out-muscle the Bulls in the mauls.
It says a lot that the Bulls scored three of their four tries in the last 30 minutes. Perhaps the Stormers were suffering because of the altitude, perhaps they just couldn’t match the power.
John Dobson will be scratching his shiny bald head to work out a strategy to beat a complete team like the Bulls.
Bulls 40-22 Stormers
Tries Bulls: Johan Grobbelaar (2), Canan Moodie, Embrose Papier
Tries Stormers: Ben Loader, Evan Roos, Andre-Hugo Venter
➤ Clueless. That’s just one of the words that describes the Sharks’ performance against the Lions.
From the fifth minute, when Sanele Nohamba flat-footed the entire Sharks team to score under the posts, it was all but game over.
Perhaps the experiment of playing Nohamba at flyhalf is now over as he put in a Springbok-standard performance at scrumhalf. It is unfair, however, to mention only one player as it was a team performance of the highest quality.
Other than buying more and more expensive players, Neil Powell and John Plumtree seem incapable of coming up with any winning strategies. Between the two of them, they must take responsibility for the fact that players of the calibre of Aphelele Fassi, Grant Williams and Bongi Mbonambi, can all play that badly. Sadly, there’s no guarantee that Eben Etzebeth, had he played, would have been any better. It is clear that the problem does not lie with the players.
Lions 40-10 Sharks
Tries Lions: Sanele Nohamba, JC Pretorius, Quan Horn, Conraad Van Vuuren, Erich Cronje, Hanru Sirgel
Tries Sharks: Eduan Keyter
