No silver bullet to stop Bulls 'soft moments'

A lot has been made about the Vodacom Bulls’ ability to allow opposition back into the game during the current Vodacom United Rugby season.

But the truth is, there is no coaching way to counter it - and Bulls coach Jake White can only hope that by experience, his team learn from their experiences ahead of their mammoth task to face Leinster in Dublin on Friday night.

The Bulls stayed in the fight for the first half against the Sharks, then scored two quick second half tries and looked to be cruising in the quarterfinal before the Sharks came back and almost won the game.

The 84th minute drop goal from Chris Smith proved to be the difference between the sides and sent the Bulls into the semifinal.

But that lapse in judgement - those soft moments as they are often referred to - could be the difference between winning and an almighty loss on Friday night. Leinster have proved over and over again that if you give them an opening, they will crowbar it open to take away all hope from the opposition.

So just how does White stop the Bulls from a concentration lapse and get them to play the perfect game against the Irish powerhouse. The pragmatic answer is easy - let them learn from experience. White knows there is little that he can do other than keep repeating the mantra of staying in the game.

There is no silver bullet on the training field, no wonderous fix-it that can suddenly be employed with the little time they have before Friday’s game and a cross-hemisphere travelling schedule.The key here is to harvest the determination and make sure the team learn from the situations they will be in.

There is no doubt the Bulls have grown immensely as the season has progressed but they haven’t been tested like they will be on Friday night in front of a partisan Leinster crowd and as massive underdogs.

“The Stormers and Sharks have big forwards and like to maul. I said at one point the game was going on for nine and a half minutes and we hadn’t had the ball yet. Once that happens you allow the other team to build pressure on you,” White said after beating the Sharks.

“How do you sort it out, you’ve just got to keep putting them in those situations and allowing them to grow as a group. There is no other way to do it.

“Hopefully when we get more experience, we have to learn that you’ve got to hold onto the ball instead of giving it away so easily and we will then make it easier for ourselves. It is not something you got to practice and fix, it is something that hopefully becomes easier over time - when you’ve got a group of players at this level.

“Next week against Leinster if you give them the ball for 10 minutes at the beginning of the game, they are not going to miss out on those opportunities.”

And that’s the crux of the matter. Leinster will be clinical, and they will be ruthless if they are given the chance.

Just as Glasgow who this weekend went 7-0 up, only to drop away with a yellow card and three ruthless tries from the Irish side that eventually turned the game into a rout.

The Bulls will have seen this and know how quickly things can go wrong against a team like Leinster.

But they will be hopeful that the fight in them will be enough. And that despite all the odds of playing away from home against the tournament favourites, they may have a chance.

On Saturday even though they allowed the Sharks back they got that chance first through Marcell Coetzee and then through Chris Smith’s drop goal.

They will need more than that this Friday and they will need to stop the soft moments.

Against a virtual test team like Leinster that will determine their fate.