Bulls ready to be the advanced guard as SA’s isolation ends

Rainbow Cup SA delivered its moments and there was certainly much more quality rugby than we saw last season but now comes the moment everyone has been waiting for - the proper test of where South Africa stands.

From a promotional point of view, the Pro14 Rainbow Cup organisers might have been better off had one of the more established teams won the northern section of the competition. It was a Covid situation that led to Benetton advancing to the final to be played on their Treviso home field on Saturday without actually playing, which was just a reminder that these are still strange times we live in.

Munster comfortably won their game against the other Italian team, Zebre, at the start of the last round, which would have meant Benetton would have had to beat the Ospreys in Bridgend to qualify for the final. How would that have turned out? We will never know.

INTER-CONTINENTAL FINAL SOMETHING TO CELEBRATE

And perhaps it doesn’t matter because although the Vodacom Bulls travelling to Italy to play a Munster or a Leinster might have been considered a better examination of the strength of the local South African game, that there will be a grand final between the two Rainbow Cup winners in the different hemispheres is on its own something to celebrate.

As Bulls coach Jake White was quick to point out after his team’s win at Jonsson King’s Park, it is also now time for something different.

The local derbies have improved on what we saw in last year’s Carling Currie Cup and Vodacom Super Rugby Unlocked but they have been a lot of the same thing. Saturday’s final is something different, and White said something we haven’t heard a local coach being able to say for quite a while - “We are doing it for the whole of South Africa”.

Which really is the vibe from this weekend onwards. The Rainbow Cup final raises the curtain on South Africa’s return to international competition after a break of exactly 15 months. Yes, it was 14 March 2020, meaning exactly 15 months to the day, that we last saw the likes of the Bulls, DHL Stormers, Cell C Sharks and Emirates Lions play anything other than derbies.

SATURDAY’S DECIDER IS START OF A FLOOD

Saturday’s game will be the first time a South African team playing the 15-man conventional code will be playing overseas, and against a foreign team, since what was to be the last global Super Rugby competition was interrupted. It’s been a long drought, but this will be the start of a flood, with the Bulls being the advanced recce patrol ahead of the forthcoming national battles against Georgia and the British and Irish Lions.

The Bulls will be ready for the battle and given the championship qualities they have exhibited at home since the return from lockdown, they should be heavily favoured to continue their winning ways in Treviso and become the first titleholders in what will become known as the Pro16 era.

They will go to Italy without their national players who have already joined the Springbok camp in Bloemfontein, but White has contracted wisely, with just four players being absent from his group in the final week because of national commitments. One of them, Duane Vermeulen, is injured anyway.

COETZEE’S PRESENCE BIG BOOST FOR BULLS

The national coaches have conspired in his favour, perhaps deliberately, by leaving Marcell Coetzee out of their plans for now. As White says, Coetzee’s time will come, but for now, the former Ulster star, who has been out most of the year with injury, can accumulate some valuable game-time that he wouldn’t have been able to if he was in the national camp.

And he can do so while offering the Bulls some valuable leadership as not only a talented, busy and special player, but also a man who will be no stranger to Treviso and to the challenge posed by Benetton. He’s played in Italy and against Saturday’s opponents often for Ulster.

Benetton were fair winners of the northern section, but if you look at what got them to the final, their four games did not include any clashes with the big Irish provinces - Leinster, Munster or Ulster - that tend to be the front-runners in Pro14.

They played fellow Italian team Zebre twice, Glasgow Warriors and their big win was when they relied on an excellent defensive effort to pip Connacht, the fourth-ranked Irish team, in their last game three weeks ago.

TRAVELING WITH THE WEIGHT OF EXPECTATION

The Bulls should be expected to beat them or this final will be a harbinger of tough times ahead when the South African teams enter the Pro16 in a few months from now. That’s what makes Saturday’s game interesting. The South African champions do travel with plenty of expectation weighed on their shoulders.

But then Coetzee’s men have become used to that, and in beating the Sharks away at Jonsson King’s Park in their last league fixture, they again showed their uncanny ability to retain composure under pressure and win the big points. In this match, the big points came in the period just after the home team had scored their first try and were pushing for their second.

Both White and the Sharks coach Sean Everitt acknowledged that was the turning point in the game. Had the Sharks added a second try just before halftime, they would have been halfway to their objective, they would have led at the break by more than seven, and it might have been a different game.

But a great tackle forced the Sharks to drop the ball over the line when in the act of scoring. And then came the charge down that led to Cornal Hendricks scoring the try that put the Bulls back into a lead that they were to keep for the rest of the match.

LIFTED A GEAR ONE MORE TIME

The Bulls have shown a knack for lifting a gear in the second half so when the Sharks trailed at the break, and noting that they didn’t have the potential lift in their future of having first choice props Ox Nche and Thomas du Toit on their bench because of the Springbok resting protocols, it seemed pretty obvious that their race had been run.

Sure enough, the Bulls did take control after that, with the Sharks' own ambitions of being in the final effectively ended when the Bulls scored their fourth try, thus notching their bonus point, 20 minutes from the final whistle.

In winning in Durban, the Bulls managed to progress through one more frontier, as they hadn’t won yet at King’s Park under White. This coming weekend they should progress through one more by becoming the first titleholders in the Pro16 era.

WEEKEND RESULTS

Rainbow Cup SA

Cell C Sharks 22 Vodacom Bulls 34

Northern Rainbow Cup

Zebre 11 Munster 54
Leinster 38 Dragons 7
Scarlets 28 Edinburgh 28