While the collective South African rugby fraternity is holding its breath in anticipation of the spicy Vodacom United Rugby Championship battle that will play out in Durban on Saturday, Vodacom Bulls winger Sebastian de Klerk is relishing the opportunity of more oxygen to spur his side on to victory.
The Hollywoodbets Sharks’ win in the EPCR Challenge Cup last weekend has made the Durban clash even more anticipated, especially as there is a belief that the Sharks will pick their best side to finish the season on a high.
While there is nothing in the game from a league standpoint for them to aim for, for the Bulls it is a very different matter, and Jake White’s men need to win, preferably with a bonus point if they are to give themselves a chance of finishing on top of the URC log after the final round of games.
And that’s without taking into account the normal derby closeness of games between these two sides and the spectacle that it creates.
De Klerk believes the move from the highveld to sea level will stimulate the oxygen in the Bulls blood and allow their already free-flowing game plan to dominate proceedings if they go about it the right way.
“We can play our game there. We will be at sea level, so will have some more oxygen as well. We will play the same type of rugby if the opportunities are there, so our mindset will stay the same in terms of wanting to score tries,” De Klerk told the media this week.
“We can’t control which side they will pick, and it doesn’t really matter to us, because we are prepping the same, either way. For us as a backline, we’ve done our prep on them and we know where we want to target them and put them under pressure.
“I don’t want to elaborate too much on it, but we are very excited to go there. We haven’t won there in a while, and there are actually not a lot of teams that have won there and scored many tries.
“So, we would really like to make a statement, go out there and put up a very good performance.”
TAIL END TRIES
While the Bulls are by far the top try-scoring side in the tournament, there has been some attention on the fact they have let sides come back at them in the tail end of games to score easy tries and rack up some points.
De Klerk said that had received a lot of attention in the team in the last fortnight.
“There’s a lot of attention on the defence at the moment,” De Klerk explained. “I think our defensive coaches have been working hard, and they have been the whole season. In most of the games, we defended exceptionally well but there are games where we slipped a bit.
“We have definitely worked on it but I don’t think it was like our defence was now in trouble or that we should panic. We worked on the things we did wrong and the things we can do better.
“I believe in the Sharks game, there will be a much better performance in the defence.”
“There is a lot of attention on the defence at the moment, but I think our defence coaches are working really hard on it – and they have been the whole season,” the 24-year-old former Boland Landbou pupil said yesterday.
“For most of the games, we defended exceptionally well. There were games where we slipped up a bit, but we definitely worked on it.
“We will definitely continue attacking as we have, and score as many tries as possible. Our coaches have worked very hard on our defence and attack, so that we can find those gaps and score so many points.
“We will definitely keep focusing on that, but the players also have a standard, and we don’t want to concede so many tries – even though we score such a lot of points.
“But while we want fewer points against us, no one feels like they have to panic or something. When it comes to the big games where we really have to defend, we will be able to do it.”
Saturday will tell if the Bulls hard work has paid off, and will serve as a very good challenge for the playoff rounds, which won’t get any easier.