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Bulls won't underestimate Benetton

general03 June 2024 07:00| © SuperSport
By:Brenden Nel
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Jake White © Geallo Images

Underestimate Italian side Benetton at your peril. That’s the message that Vodacom Bulls Director of Rugby Jake White will be sending his troops ahead of Saturday’s Vodacom United Rugby Championship quarterfinal against the Italians at Loftus Versfeld.

Although the Bulls beat Benetton a few weeks back 56-35, the amount of points conceded and Benetton’s 31-6 demolition of Edinburgh this past weekend in the winner-takes-all eliminator showed just how good they can be.

And the difference between heading to Pretoria on the back of a win over the Sharks and a normal league game, contrasted with a playoff game where there are no second chances, makes them dangerous opposition indeed.

White knows this and knows that the Bulls struggled to get home ground advantage in Durban and now can’t go and waste it.

“Our first goal was to make the playoffs, and secondly to make sure we play at home. We achieved both those goals,” White said after his team’s win in Durban.

“In the first year in the competition we made the final and last year we lost to the Stormers in the quarterfinal. We’ve achieved those goals. We could never host a semifinal and we have a wonderful opportunity to do so.

“Saying that, Benetton will be everything but an easy opponent this weekend.”

But despite the loss of Marco van Staden to injury, the Bulls can be more than satisfied with their outing to Durban and second place finish overall. In the end the defeat to Munster, who topped the log, probably cost them first spot.

Yet the Durban game was tricky and difficult, and the Bulls stood to lose everything against a tough opponent. The way they buckled down and ground out the win will please White, not to mention the impressive performance of their front row, who dominated the scrums against three World Cup winners.

“Our front row was outstanding. Take nothing away, they are World Cup winners – it’s Ox and Vincent and Bongi – and what gives us confidence is that our front row can compete against what has been touted as the best front row in the world,” White beamed.

But with a plethora of handling errors, the Bulls were far from their best and needed three lineout maul tries to get them the bonus point.

“Playing in Durban the handling is always an issue, it is one of the venues with the weather that is difficult to play in.

“But when I look back at it now, there is no doubt that having a week off and playing against a team that played last week comes with a challenge as well.

“At the end of the day we ended up getting the five points, we ended up winning the game. And that is obviously what we really wanted to achieve when we got here this week.

“We’ve played really well and again we have scored four tries and again, even though we made so many mistakes, we still looked like we could score from anywhere.

“What I also enjoyed was when we had to maul and score tries at the end our forwards can do that as well. And considering it was a pack that I had changed, I had new props on and I had a new lock on and yet we still looked cohesive.

“We couldn’t afford to just win the game, because if we hadn’t won by eleven points or more we would’ve ended up not giving ourselves a chance to come second.

“That was the challenge I laid out to the players. It took us a long time but we got the four tries and that is going to be massive for us as a group, it’s going to be massive for our confidence.”

And now that they’ve achieved the first part of their campaign, the key is to make home ground advantage count.

And ensure that a first semifinal at home doesn’t elude them any longer.

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