Will it be a case of third time lucky for the Bulls in the United Rugby Championship this season?
Having lost two URC finals – in 2022 to the Stormers in Cape Town and last year against Glasgow in Pretoria – Jake White’s team are desperate for some silverware as a reward for all their progress shown over the last few years.
They certainly took a significant step forward in that regard by beating Munster 16-13 in Limerick last Saturday, becoming the first South African team to win at Thomond Park.
But having been knocked out of the Challenge Cup recently by Edinburgh, the Bulls need to back-up the Munster triumph in another enormous clash against Glasgow in Scotland this Friday (8.35pm start).
It was a deflating blow when they last 21-16 to the Warriors in last June’s final at Loftus Versfeld, and they are primed to take revenge at Scotstoun Stadium on Friday.
White stated after the Munster game that the team had marked down this Glasgow clash on their calendars already after the title decider, and aim to make amends as they push for second spot on the URC log.
Glasgow eked out a hard-fought 14-6 win over Zebre in Italy at the weekend, and will have to find the energy for another big game after being thrashed 52-0 by Leinster in the Champions Cup quarter-final in Dublin a week earlier.
“The golden nugget for me is how do we go from where we are to being champions?” White said.
“We’ve lost two finals. We’ve lost in every single tournament we’ve played... we’ve got to the playoffs.
“I mean, the challenge now is how are we going to convert those opportunities that we get in the playoff games to win those games? And I’m sure it will come.
“I mean, I’m very, very sure it will come because there’s, you know, there’s a talent and for the four minutes at the end of that game, you saw there was a desire to win as well.
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“And when you combine those two – a desire to win and talent, as we’ve shown in the last couple of years and our team growing older, as in more mature and older – it’s going to be something that I’m sure that we can use in our favour going into these big games.”
With the Bulls able to enjoy a week off after the Glasgow game, there will be no need to rotate or rest anyone, so White should be able to pick his strongest possible team.
It will be interesting to see whether he continues with the centre pair of Harold Vorster and David Kriel, though, as they got through an enormous amount of work on defence especially against Munster.
Stedman Gans is a viable option at outside centre, with Kriel able to shift to No 12, especially as Glasgow play a much quicker game than Munster and will look to move the ball around.
Another position for White to ponder about is at hooker. Akker van der Merwe started his third game in a row on tour last weekend, and on the fast 4G pitch, the more mobile Johan Grobbelaar could be better suited to counter Glasgow’s high-tempo approach.
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But the Bulls may need to be managed in training a bit this week, especially with a six-day turnaround.
“Week four (on tour) was always going to be (tough), and don’t forget we play Glasgow Friday night,” White said.
“So, it was always going to be a week where we would have to be clever about how much we expect from them (in training).
“People are probably not aware, but we played Munster, who won this competition two years ago, and now we play Glasgow, who won the competition last year.
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“I mean, that’s back-to-back champions.
“I don’t think that there’ve been too many tougher games consecutively for us than these two.
“So, we always knew that we’re going to have to be box clever going into the Glasgow fixture.”