Bulls coach Johan Ackermann praised his team for the way they turned a 3-21 deficit into a 22-21 victory over the Glasgow Warriors at Murrayfield on Saturday afternoon.
“I couldn’t believe the whistle went and we won,” Ackermann said soon after his team had booked their spot in the final against Leinster in Dublin on June 19.
“We really showed so much commitment tonight, the players. I’m so proud of the team … it’s a privilege to be part of this team and this occasion.
“And the comeback is special, I won’t lie, because they were really playing good rugby and Franco [Smith, the Warriors coach] has got a team now together for four years and they’re a quality team.
“This is probably one of the best victories I had, just the character that the guys showed.”
The Bulls were caught flatfooted early on as the Warriors hit them hard with three tries, two of them by Kyle Steyn on the right wing.
They failed to gain much momentum on attack and they also spent 20 minutes of the first half playing with 14 men, after Handre Pollard and then Ruan Nortje were yellow-carded.
And they were still one man short when hooker Johan Grobbelaar finally forced his way over late in the first half.
“Our forwards had to work extremely hard, especially with the two yellow cards,” said Ackermann. “And that try that we scored to make it 21-10 was important and it was a grind. Marcell [Coetzee] scored, was disallowed, then we had to grind again [for Grobbelaar to score].
“Our scrum was very good tonight.”
There was one moment late in the second half where the pack won a crucial penalty when Glasgow had the put-in at a scrum in a potentially dangerous position.
The Bulls eight steamrolled their opponents backwards mercilessly.
The Bulls backline was porous in the first half, particulaly at midfield, but Ackermann didn’t seem overly concerned heading into the final.
“We’ll review it and we’ll look at it. Obviously we had two yellow cards so it does put a bit of strain on you and especially when Handre went off, they exploited it quite well at the back.”
The Bulls might have won by a more comfortable margin had Pollard not missed a conversion and three penalty kicks in the second half, two of which were realistic opportunities.
“Handre just said in the team talk now he’s going to practise his goal-kicking a bit,” Ackermann said with a laugh. “We can smile now, we got that one point more than them and that’s the thing … we’re just lucky that it didn’t influence the result.
“In actual fact one of the coaches made the comment [that] it kept Glasgow in their half, even the misses, so in that sense it was a positive.”
The Bulls will travel home from Scotland and take a few days off before they regroup to prepare for the final.
“My personal experience and feeling is you don’t change too much,” said Ackermann. “You try and stick to what is familiar from a training point of view, from a planning point of view.
“We saw tonight sometimes things don’t go your way and you fight through those momentum swings.”
Leinster finished the round robin stage second on the log, behind the Glasgow Warriors.
But after the Bulls’ performance in Edinburgh not too many people are going to bet against them in the final.
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