If Jake White’s Vodacom Bulls can beat Aviron Bayonnais in France on Saturday, they will have made the most emphatic statement in their quest for the EPCR Challenge Cup title.
Saturday is a last 16 play-off, but Bayonne are among the favourites to have emerged from the Challenge Cup pool stages. They have proved impossible to beat at home this season, in the Challenge Cup and in the French TOP 14.
The Bulls played in the pool rounds of the Investec Champions Cup and did not qualify for the last 16. They were among those teams to get a second life for a title challenge in the Challenge Cup, where the teams that finished fifth in their Investec Champions Cup pool join the leading qualifiers from the Challenge Cup pool rounds
Bayonne have been among the pacesetters this season, in the EPCR Challenge Cup and also their domestic TOP 14.
They are a form side, having won 12 in succession in all competitions at home, and are currently fourth in the TOP 14, below Stade Toulousain (1st) Union Bordeaux-Bègles (2nd) and RC Toulon (3rd), but such has been their form at home that their victories include beating all of the Top three in the league, plus emphatic wins against two-time Champions Cup winners Stade Rochelais (37-7) and Racing 92 (12-8).
There have been two one-point two nail biters at home, Montpellier Hérault Rugby in the TOP 14 and the Scarlets in the Challenge Cup.
Outside of those crunch finishes, they have eased past any pretenders who have gone to the Parc des Sports with ambition or illusions of grandeur.
Bulls coach White coached Montpellier to their first ever Challenge Cup title and spent enough time in France to know what it takes to win at Bayonne.
Former Springbok World Cup winner Frans Steyn, now the Director of Rugby at the Cheetahs, played a combined 161 matches for Racing 92 (59) and Montpellier (102). It is the one ground he never won at, and Steyn, in an incredible career, won at pretty much every other ground.
SOUTH AFRICAN FLAVOUR
As has become custom in the northern clubs, there tends to be a South African flavour to the match-day squads and the Rainbow Nation has been well represented by former Springbok, Cheetahs and Scarlets loose-forward Umair Cassiem, with prop Pieter Scholtz another of the South Africans at Bayonne.
Cassiem has been integral to Bayonne’s winning form, having started 14 of 16 matches this season, for a game time total of 1015 minutes at a game average of 63 minutes.
He knows the taste of victory and he knows South African rugby’s DNA.
Scholtz, who has been used mostly as an impact player, has four starts in 11, but the former Southern Kings and Cheetahs front ranker is as familiar with the South African psyche.
England’s Samoan-born midfielder bruiser Manu Tuilagi has rediscovered his spark at Bayonne, starting 15 of his 16 matches, with a game time average of 72 minutes and a season’s play time of 1157 minutes.
Tuilagi, a menace on attack, previously played all his club rugby for Leicester Tigers and Sale Sharks in England, but the past few years he has struggled with injury.
The move to Bayonne has been the medicine for a full recovery and he has taken to the club just like the club fans have taken to his imposing presence.
The Bulls, currently third in the Vodacom URC, are desperate to win the URC and Challenge Cup double.
They have targeted success in the Challenge Cup and it will take every one of their senior players and Springboks to stand tall if the South Africans are to do what no other team has done this season, which is to win at the Parc des Sports, also known as the Stade Jean-Dauger.