Cape Town - Bulls captain Ruan Nortje looked understandably heartbroken immediately after his team had gone down 23-19 to the Stormers at a pumping Loftus Versfeld on Saturday night.
His team had come really close to finally ending a series of defeats to the Capetonians as they camped inside the opposition 22 over the last five minutes.
But in the end, Stormers replacement lock Ruben van Heerden pulled off a superb turnover and hammered the ball into touch to secure a fifth consecutive victory over Jake White’s team in the URC.
White said afterwards that the Bulls had their chances, and felt that they could have done things a bit differently in those last enthralling minutes.
The first opportunity saw them put together 20 phases via mainly pick-and-go carries from the forwards, but then Stormers tighthead reserve Sazi Sandi pounced on the ground under the posts to win the penalty in the 79th minute.
The home side got another chance when Ben-Jason Dixon knocked-on from the subsequent lineout just outside the Stormers 22 and earned a penalty from the resultant scrum, which Morné Steyn kicked out to about eight metres from the tryline.
The Bulls went for a maul from that lineout, which was collapsed by the Stormers four metres out, and instead of going for a trademark tap-kick move, Nortje opted for another lineout, which was disrupted a bit by the Cape team.
They tried hard to regain momentum with some one-off runners, but Van Heerden made the decisive play.
Nortje said in a Bulls video on Twitter that it was a “tough one to take”, and White said the No 5 lock was a bit down in the change-room afterwards.
“Exactly the same thing happened in the Scarlets game. We tap it and we don’t score, and they go, ‘Why didn’t you take the lineout?’. I thought we could’ve thrown it to the back of the lineout. We had three locks on the field, and it probably would have worked as the Stormers chased forward and won that ball, and didn’t have anyone at the back,” the Bulls director of rugby said.
“So, we probably would have won that lineout at the back, and then who knows… That’s the margins.
“My captain will get it right. He’s going through a tough time now with calls and people double-guessing whether or not he’s got the right calls…
“I’ve been through this with John Smit and other young captains. He’ll learn, he will get better. He’s not happy… he’s obviously dropped his head a little bit; he’s a little bit down on himself. He knows how important his role is. But that’s part of what we’ve got to do – help him through this time.”
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The result means that the Bulls are unlikely to catch up to the Stormers in the SA Shield, as they are now 13 points behind, with four matches to go before the playoffs.
But White hoped that his team would heed the lessons from yet another loss to the Stormers in the rest of the competition.
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“We struggled with the breakdown interpretations… We were under the poles after 10 to 15 phases, and were a bit inaccurate there. We should have kept the ball and kept building pressure, and we weren’t accurate enough to keep it. If we had kept it, who knows – maybe we would have been able to score,” he said.
“But I am not going to nail anybody… I’ve seen this movie before as well. We lost fair and square. We had a couple of chances at the end, and I think we could have adapted better. We will have to learn those things as we go deeper into this competition.”
IOL Sport