Western Province lost their third promising young player to the Blue Bulls in less than two months when flyhalf Lionel Cronje signed for the Pretoria side on Monday.

Cronje, once tipped as the future of WP in the crucial No10 jersey, will join exciting centre Johann Sadie and talented wing JJ Engelbrecht at Loftus next season.

Although injuries have hampered Cronje's season, he is set to play for WP against Free State on Saturday because of an injury to Isma-eel Dollie last weekend.

Cronje has been strangely handled by the management team at Newlands and fell behind Gary van Aswegen and Kurt Coleman in the flyhalf pecking order during the Super 15 this year. His is the latest name on a long list of talent to slip WP's net after being overlooked.

Sadie, who was very good in his first Super rugby campaign and has been superb in the Currie Cup, will be sorely missed.

The emergence of Van Aswegen, and more recently Demetri Catrakilis, forced Cronje further down the flyhalf queue and it is not surprising that the Bulls came calling.

Blue Bulls high performance director Ian Schwartz is a successful talent spotter and good negotiator. He was instrumental in persuading Francois Hougaard to leave WP after school and move to Pretoria.

Similarly, he lured a raw Bryan Habana away from the Golden Lions at the end of 2004. Habana's best years, between 2005 and 2009, were all in Bulls colours.

WP have also failed to secure the services of some of the most talented juniors coming through their school ranks. Besides Hougaard, they allowed Free State and Bok loose-forward Ashley Johnson, a former WP schools captain, to get away.

In Sadie's case WP simply couldn't match the Bulls' offer. Sadie will earn R1.2-million a season at Loftus. WP, with a huge wage bill, weighed down by over R10-million a year being paid to Habana, Jaque Fourie and Jean de Villiers alone, could not compete.