If the Vodacom Bulls need to find an Achilles heel that could ruin all their hopes in this year’s Vodacom United Rugby Championship, they have to look no further than the aerial battle, and their inability to field an integral part of rugby’s attack system.
As the team prepares for a two week break from action following their rain-soaked 19-16 loss to the DHL Stormers on Saturday, the coaching team have a new problem on their hands. For some reason, in pressure matches, the Bulls have not been able to dominate the aerial battle, and it has become costly.
Nobody who watched the delayed game on Saturday night would be able to remember more than a fleeting moment where the Bulls were in the contest for the high ball. At almost every turn they fumbled, lost the contest and were under pressure by their own mistakes.
Twice when they fielded high balls, a rarity, the next pass produced a handling mistake, killing any momentum they could have picked up.
And on attack their kicks were often too far, or too close, hardly giving themselves a chance to put any pressure on the opposition.
SECOND TIME BULLS LOST AERIAL BATTLE
It may seem like an over-critical assessment of where things went wrong in a very close game, but it is now the second time the Bulls have lost the aerial battle with disastrous results. In their loss to the Hollywoodbets Sharks, the Durban side scored two tries off dropped high kicks, and a third on a dropped pass.
Injuries aside, there is certainly something amiss at Loftus Versfeld at the moment, and unless the Bulls find a cure for their ailment, it could be a very long season indeed for them.
Saturday’s game may be excused for the conditions, as well as the big injuries the Bulls picked up in the first half that disrupted them, but it is now a recurring theme that other sides will pick up and try and use against them in the rest of the competition.
The combination of their back three under pressure under any high ball, and the inability to place that pressure back on the opposition through similar kicks was fatal on Saturday.
Willie le Roux remains an attacking genius at times, but the weather was not his game, and to expect him to play a 10 man game is unfair for someone who is trying to come to grips with a positional change at the highest level of the game.
The news that Handre Pollard is returning to Loftus was great as it was confirmed hours before kickoff, but Pollard’s game-management ability will only be there next season. This season the Bulls need to find answers.
MOODIE LOSS WAS BIG
To be fair to them, the loss of Canan Moodie just four minutes in played a massive part, with the Bok winger one of the best under the high ball. The continuing absence of fellow Bok Kurt-Lee Arendse, one of the bravest in the game, hasn’t helped either.
And Wandisile Simelane’s try on Saturday came from a dropped high ball, another irony that will be debated in management circles for some time.
To his credit White has already identified the issue, and admitted his side was not good enough under the high ball on Saturday.
“Our lineout was a bit shoddy in the first half and we never won an aerial contest in the whole game,” he said after the game.
“Every time there was an up and under, we were less efficient than the Stormers. They kicked really well and put us under pressure.
“The try they scored, they isolated Sebastian de Klerk, we knocked it on, it hit Paul de Wet’s foot on the fly and Wandisile used his football skills to score.
"When the ball did bounce into our hands after we had kicked it, we knocked it on. The conditions didn’t make it easy, but we also made it hard for ourselves.”
NO GLASS HALF EMPTY FOR JAKE
For White the break couldn’t come at a better time, and while the Bulls are hurting after the loss, they are still well placed for a top four placing on the log. How they respond to this setback will be key for their hopes. But as always, White is not taking a glass half empty approach.
“We’re still third on the log, and we got points in the bag when playing away from home. We’ve just got to regroup now. We’ve got some really tough games coming up.
“We need to get to the quarterfinals and have our best team on the field and play as well as we can and hopefully get to the final.
“We’re in a much better place than the other SA teams at this stage, so I’m not going to sit here and say to you, ‘What happens now?’, you know. What happens now is we have two weeks off and then we’ve got a couple more home games before we head off on our EPCR tour.”
So for now time to reflect and to plan. The Bulls can expect many more high balls to be kicked their way for the rest of the season. They need to find a solution to the situation before it becomes a fatal problem for them.