The Vodacom Bulls broke a sequence of DHL Stormers success against them in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship when they won 40-22 at Loftus last March, but history is heavily weighted in favour of the Cape team when it comes to home matches against their arch-rivals.
Indeed, the Stormers’ dominance of the old enemy in all competitions on their home field, be that their current headquarters at DHL Stadium or their former base at Newlands, extends back over a decade and a half. That is if you disregard what happened during the Covid season spanning the end of 2020 and the start of 2021.
To refresh the memories of those who might have been otherwise occupied or just weren’t paying attention to rugby in the time of the pandemic, it was during that bleak period of empty stadiums that both the Stormers and Western Province bade farewell to their old home ground of more than a century, Newlands.
These days Currie Cup games are so often played under-strength that it is wise to discount them when referring to the history of South Africa’s two most successful unions, the Bulls (formerly Northern Transvaal) and WP.
But in the last weekend of November 2020 the teams were at full strength for what turned out to be the final Currie Cup game ever played between the giants of the north and south. The catch was that there were no spectators in the stadium because of the pandemic to witness Jake White’s Bulls (he had just taken over from Pote Human) score a brave and exciting 22-20 win.
BULLS WON NEWLANDS FINALE WITH 14 MEN
It was brave because the Bulls had lost Jacques van Rooyen to a red card in the 47th minute so they had to play for more than half an hour with 14 men. The Bulls had been trailing near the end but scored a last gasp try that Chris Smith converted from the touchline to win it for his team.
It wasn’t the first time White had presided as coach over a historic win for a 14-man team, as he’d been in charge of the Sharks when they beat Crusaders in similar circumstances in a Super Rugby game in 2014. That win in New Zealand was a mighty achievement and the one in Cape Town six years later would have been as satisfying as it was the first Currie Cup win for the Bulls at Newlands in 11 years.
Here’s a refresher for those who are wondering about the circumstances of the previous defeat in 2009. It was in that semifinal 16 years ago where WP were leading with just a few minutes to go and their big Fijian winger Sireli Naqelevuki was penalised for a clumsy late tackle. None other than the Bulls and Boks goalkicking metronome of that era, Morne Steyn, kicked the clutch three pointer that broke Province hearts.
ELEVEN AND NINE YEAR DROUGHTS
Before that the 11 year drought for the Bulls against WP in Cape Town was almost matched by the one the Bulls had experienced against the Stormers, which is the Cape team’s identity in the major competitions with an international flavour. There was limited international flavour in the forerunner of the United Rugby Championship, the Rainbow Cup, with Covid preventing the travel that would have been required were it to start out as a cross hemisphere competition.
Instead there were different sections, and the Bulls eventually ended up winning the South African conference to advance to a final against the European winners, the Italian club Benetton, where they were well beaten in Treviso.
En route to that final the Bulls won what to date remains their only win over the Stormers at the new Stormers’ base of DHL Stadium. Like the Currie Cup game played a few months earlier, the game was close, with the Stormers pressing for the win at the final whistle but the Bulls holding on for a 20-16 win.
It was their first win over the Stormers in Cape Town since a 19-16 Super Rugby win at Newlands in 2011. In other words, a gap of nine years. That would have been a reason for the Pretoria team to celebrate but again, like with the Currie Cup clash before that, the drought was broken in front of an empty stadium.
It is reasonable to argue that home ground advantage means a lot less if you don’t have your fans in the stadium to cheer you on, so Saturday’s big URC clash at DHL Stadium represents an opportunity to be the first Bulls team to beat the Stormers away without there being an asterisk appended to the result since 2011. A gap of nearly 14 years.
For the record, the Stormers have won seven of eight URC games between the teams, including the 2022 Grand Final and the quarterfinal a year later. They’ve beaten the Bulls at Loftus twice, so they’ve won six URC games at Saturday’s venue.
So if you are one of those who backs history, rather than recent form, and take into consideration where the game is being played, this will be a match where you back the Stormers to win - because these are no longer the times of Covid and that’s the only time the Bulls have prevailed in the Mother City since 2011.
In all games played between the Stormers and Bulls, starting with the game played in what was the aborted 2020 Super Rugby season at Newlands, won 13-0 by the Cape side, and including the Covid games, it is the Stormers who have a comfortable lead when it comes to results - played 11, won 8, lost 3.
STORMERS V BULLS RESULTS SINCE 2020 (home teams first)
2 March 2024: Bulls 40 Stormers 22 (URC)
22 December 2023: Stormers 26 Bulls 20 (URC)
6 May, 2023: Stormers 33-21 Bulls (URC quarterfinal)
18 February, 2023: Bulls 19-23 Stormers (URC)
23 December, 2022: Stormers 37-27 Bulls (URC)
18 June, 2022: Stormers 18-13 Bulls (URC Grand Final)
9 April, 2022: Stormers 19-17 Bulls (URC)
22 January, 2022: Bulls 26-30 Stormers (URC)
4 June 2021: Bulls 31 Stormers 27 (Rainbow Cup)
8 May 2021: Stormers 16 Bulls 20 (Rainbow Cup)
8 February 2020: Stormers 13 Bulls 0 (Super Rugby)