The Vodacom Bulls don’t think they will be underdone, but their decision not to play any pre-season warm-up games will benefit them in what will be a long and tough season down the road.
While they face the Emirates Lions this weekend in their opening Vodacom United Rugby Championship match in Johannesburg, the Bulls went a different route to other sides and gave their players lots of time off, especially after the non-stop games from the past two years.
So while they are keen to hit the ground running, assistant coach Chris Rossouw believes they may not be at full match-fitness but it is a risk worth taking.
“I think we will be one or two steps off the pace. But we gave guys five weeks off – it was the first off time we had in two years, so the time we had off will suit us well in the middle of the year, because it’s a very busy season,” Rossouw said.
“We have had a very good off-season in the last few weeks. We had a game against two Bulls sides last week, which was really good for us. But we know the real thing will get you there, but it will probably take us two, three weeks to get back to proper match fitness.
“But otherwise we are quite comfortable with where we are at.”
While Rossouw wouldn’t go too deep into selection, some of the team’s newest stars – such as S’bu Nkosi and Wandisile Simelane – may not make the cut this week while Johan Goosen is still a few weeks away from recovering from a knee injury.
“We will probably phase them in. S’bu came back from a very big injury, so he has been with us for six weeks. He has fit in nicely, the same with Wandisile. S’bu, as everyone knows, had a big injury, so it will probably take him a little while to settle.
“But what we saw in the last few weeks when he went flat out, he is looking good. Wandisile is settling in nicely and Johan Goosen is the other one who is coming back in the next three weeks.”
Rossouw said the team had taken note of the Lions’ attacking abilities in their 45-43 pre-season loss to the Sharks, but weren’t looking too deeply at the result.
“It was a typical pre-season game. We noticed that, but we know that it wasn’t on the edge like a real game. As far as I understood they kept going for a month more than us at the end of the previous season, so they will probably be fit.
“We had a look at the game and we saw some trends but we all knew that it was two sides and it was the first game out as well.”
Still the focus is on this week and Rossouw was keen to point out that the team aren’t underdone, but probably not where they need to be in terms of match fitness.
“We’re not underdone, we’re probably two or three games away from match fitness, but that’s everyone. We had a really good six weeks, but we know what happened last year, we found ourselves at the wrong end of the table and we had to play catch up. That was one of our goals, to have a good start, so we’re looking really forward to the first three games.”