Shunned champion Bulls have a national point to prove
You could call them the shunned Bulls, but several in Jake White’s squad will want to make another statement to the Springbok coaching leadership in Saturday’s Rainbow Cup SA clash in Pretoria. The most obvious being midfielder Cornal Hendricks.
The in-form Hendricks was a Bulls omission in the Springboks alignment camps being held in South Africa over the past few weeks.
Springboks coach Jacques Nienaber and National Director of Rugby Rassie Erasmus have identified a core group of players who will be involved in the three-Test series against the British & Irish Lions and also the two warm-up Tests against Georgia in South Africa.
Only a handful of White’s Super Rugby Unlocked and Currie Cup champions featured in the domestic alignment camps. The Bulls players selected for the alignment camp were: props Trevor Nyakane and Lizo Gqoboka, No 8 Duane Vermeulen and veteran flyhalf Morne Steyn. Loose-forward Marcel Coetzee, who is joining the Bulls from Ulster is also involved.
For now Hendricks, Springbok loose-forwards Arno Botha and Marco van Staden, Nizaam Carr and the very talented 21 year-old Elrigh Louw are on the outer.
Hendricks, who has been superb since White switched him from wing to inside centre, will want to make another statement that he belongs in a greater Springboks group, if not necessarily a first choice match-day 23, which will include Damian de Allende at 12 and Frans Steyn (among the reserves) covering 12.
The Bulls have for the past season been the form South African team and they have already won their first two Rainbow Cup SA matches in beating the Lions at home and the Stormers at the Cape Town Stadium in Cape Town.
The Sharks are also on a two-match roll, having edged the Stormers in Cape Town 33-30 and comfortably dealt with the Lions in Durban.
There has been little to choose between the Sharks and Bulls, with the Bulls needing 82 minutes to finish off the Sharks in the Currie Cup final at Loftus. The Sharks also beat the Bulls in the warm-up Preparations Series and have beaten White’s Bulls in the Currie Cup league stages.
The ‘no crowds’ situation detracts massively from home ground advantage and while the Bulls will take comfort from playing at home, it isn’t the big edge they would have gotten had the match been played in front of 30 000 plus locals.
The Sharks have several more players in the extended national squad alignment group, and the players individually will be wanting to reinforce the view of Nienaber and Erasmus when it comes to national team identification.
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