Bulls turn focus to Dublin 'test match'

They may have been a bit frustrated by the negative tactics coming from the Dragons this past weekend, but the Vodacom Bulls have now turned their focus to their top-of-the-table Vodacom United Rugby Championship clash with Irish juggernaut Leinster on Friday.

The short turnaround and loads of work that lie ahead this week for the Pretoria side were made a bit easier by the bonus point the Bulls got in the last play of the game on Saturday night, after being frustrated for almost 80 minutes by some of the most negative tactics seen in the championship.

But now, with the log leaders lying ahead, Director of Rugby Jake White has dubbed this the Bulls' “test match” against a virtual Irish side that won back-to-back Six Nations titles. Leinster supplied the bulk of Ireland's Six Nations victors and are likely to be at full strength for the game.

White believes while the Bulls have made progress and are second on the log at the moment, they need to take stock of just where they are, and the Dublin showdown will be the key for them.

“It is a great benchmark for us to see where we are as a group. It is an away game playing against a very good team, with the bulk of that team having won back-to-back Six Nations. They have beaten the Boks in the World Cup - they didn’t win the World Cup but they had the recognition of beating the team that won the World Cup,” White explained.

“I know it is going to be a great “test match” for us and a great test to see how good we are.”

White said he was satisfied with the bonus-point win over the Dragons, especially as the Bulls had struggled for a large part of the game with the spoiling tactics and should ultimately have won by a larger margin.

“They were really good at trying to spoil everything. We couldn’t get much momentum. They stopped our maul, they got in among us at the breakdown. They were clever at scrum time to get the ball out quickly, so we didn’t really have much of a contest at scrum time,” he added.

“Getting a bonus point away from home is tough and we had to work until the last second. I’m chuffed that we got over the line, because a bonus point especially at this stage of the tournament is vital for us.”

But the fact the Bulls got the bonus point against the odds, and their own mistakes, was massive for them.

“It is not just desperation, any bonus point is a bonus. We have a massive game this weekend and we want to try and make sure that we take that chance to finish in the top two. We know how important home playoffs are.

“To stay ahead of Glasgow by one point and in second was vital for us, especially away from home.

“They (Dragons) were very clever in the way they played against us, they made everything a contest. We had been playing really well off quick ball and that was one of those games where not only the breakdown, but setpiece was also very difficult to get the ball out.”

White said the 10-minute period after halftime when Celimpilo Gumede scored from a Willie le Roux crosskick, and a second try was denied by a forward pass was the only real period where they showed how dangerous they could be, with Kurt-Lee Arendse featuring heavily.

“That is exactly how we want to play. We have some exciting backs there. If we can keep the ball alive and get some go-forward ball, then obviously guys like Kurt-Lee, Canan (Moodie) and guys like that can do damage.

“That was a wonderful time for those 10-15 minutes, but they were very clever in how they sucked us in and how not to play like that.

“I’m really happy that we found a way to get through that game with problems we haven’t had before. It was the first time we had teams doing certain things to us, scrum, lineout and breakdown time, and it was good that we found a way.

“I think we probably took too long to find a way, the whole first half and a bit of the second half to figure out what we needed to do. But hopefully that will be a learning curve for us, when a team does things we don’t expect, the quicker we can adapt the better.”

The Bulls move on to Dublin with winger Sebastian de Klerk, who left the field with a concussion, the only casualty from the Newport game.