Toulouse will add more misery to Jake White’s Bulls and end any Champions Cup aspirations the men from Pretoria may have had. It has been a crazy season for the Bulls — and not crazy in a good way. It has been an even crazier rugby season in Pretoria — and again not crazy in a good way.
This week Tukkies (The University of Pretoria) got relegated from the Varsity Cup, having not won a match this season. Tuks are the most successful team in the history of the competition, having won the title five times. Now they will play in the Varsity Shield! If you had suggested Tuks playing in the Varsity Shield pre-season, you’d have been laughed out of any rugby establishment. But it happened. How?
There isn’t an obvious answer, just like there isn’t an obvious answer to the woes of the Bulls in the URC and Currie Cup. The Bulls, in all competitions, have won just two of their last 14 matches. If you had predicted that a year ago, you’d also have been labelled a joke. But it happened. How?
White, in a media conference, said it was his fault and that he had chopped and changed the team too many times. He had done this to manage the workload of his players, but by his own admission, had got it horribly wrong. It surprised me, because if any of the South African coaches was going to get the balance right in how to compete in parallel tournaments, I’d have backed White because he had to do it when coaching Montpellier.
Something is seriously wrong because the group of players is too good to have lost their last eight matches in all competitions.
White had to marry the demands of finishing in the top six of France’s Top 14 and playing in Europe’s Champions Cup and Challenge Cup respectively. This season was new ground for Stormers coach John Dobson, in finding the balance between URC and Champions Cup rugby and coaching the Western Province Currie Cup side. Ditto for Neil Powell at the Sharks in terms of the URC and Champions Cup. It was also the first time for Lions coach Ivan van Rooyen, in playing in the URC and the Challenge Cup.
Dobson has achieved the best results and been the most consistent in getting results in all three competitions. The Stormers are unbeaten in 20 home matches, are second in the URC, have won the SA Shield in beating the Sharks (twice), Bulls (twice) and Lions (twice) and they host London’s Harlequins in Cape Town on Saturday afternoon in the last 16 of the Champions Cup.
The Bulls play Toulouse, who are leading the Top 14 and have all their French international players available, including the inspirational French scrumhalf and captain Antoine Dupont, who this week was named the Six Nations player of the tournament.
This is a Bulls team that a year ago was considered the most dominant in South Africa, having won two successive Currie Cup titles on their way to making it to the first ever URC final, which was won by the Stormers. It's a Bulls franchise coached by the most experienced coach among South Africa’s URC teams in 2007 World Cup winner White and who are owned by two of the wealthiest people in Africa. This is a Bulls team whose conveyor belt of talent through the schools, clubs and varsity system is second only to that of the Western Cape. How did it all unravel?
Something is seriously wrong because the group of players is too good to have lost their last eight matches in all competitions. It isn’t about inexperience, and I don’t subscribe to the view that Marcel Coetzee was a one-man band for the Bulls. Coetzee is an exceptional leader and player, but he alone was not the reason for the Bulls dominance and his departure can’t be the reason for their dramatic fall.
You look at the touring squad, with names like Morne Steyn, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Cornal Hendricks, Canan Moodie and Harold Vorster among the backs, and Elrigh Louw, Cyle Brink, Johann Grobbelaar, Marco van Staden, Ruan Nortje and Bismarck du Plessis among the forwards and I, for one, can’t make sense of their dismal returns. And I know I am not alone.
Mark Keohane is the founder of keo.co.za, a multiple award-winning sports writer and the content director at Habari Media. Twitter: @mark_keohane
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