Bulls to take best possible squad on their short tour of Europe

Bulls assistant coach Chris Rossouw says they will pick the best available squad for their tour of Europe over the next two weeks as they continue to navigate through the Heineken Champions Cup and United Rugby Championship (URC).

The Bulls are in Europe in the next two weeks, with their first stop in France to take on Lyon in the Champions Cup on Friday night and their next in Wales to meet the Scarlets a week later.

“We are going to take the best side possible but we will take into consideration where everyone is in terms of injuries,” Rossouw said after the 39-28 Champions Cup win over Exeter Chiefs at Loftus on Saturday.

“Two months ago when we started talking about rotation and resting guys, we were the first to do that, there was criticism.

“That showed that Jake [White] was ahead of his time and now everyone is doing it. It is needed because you can’t send your team overseas every week, like we did. It's different [for] the Sharks who had three weeks at home and they sent not their best side to Connacht.

“In our case, we went back and forth for five weeks, so to put that [travelling] stress on your main guys is tough. We're obviously going to tour from there to Scarlets for the URC. We would like to field our best side possible to make sure we get the points there as well.”

Rossouw said even though they will continue to rotate players for the remainder of the Champions Cup and URC to manage players, their focus remains reaching the play-offs of both competitions.

“In the URC it is important for us to do well because we are partners in that. The final could be here and the semis. On the Champions Cup side, we will play the round of 16 here if we are top of the log in the top eight.

“For us it's to qualify in both, you can’t say the one is more important than the other. It just makes sense that you do well in URC.

“For us, this is our first taste of the Heineken Cup. There is definitely a different energy this week because it is power against power, which is the equivalent of a Test week.

“You can see the focus in everyone and the energy is just a few levels up and people enjoy this because it brings the best out of the players. We would like to qualify in both, we can’t necessarily say we are targeting the one over the other.”

Visiting coach Chiefs coach Ali Hepher was not entirely happy with the result but appreciated the losing bonus point in the heat of Pretoria.

“Not delighted overall with the result but a bonus point is very important. Any point in this competition is huge because there are only 20 up for grabs,” he said.

“I am pleased with the fightback — we showed good spirit and energy towards the end of the game.”

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