Bulls coach Nollis Marais has admitted that he will easily become a Cheetahs fan this weekend.
It is understandable that Marais would swear his allegiance to the Cheetahs as they could prove to be the team that helps his side gain entry into the Super Rugby play-offs through the back door.
The Cheetahs will have an interesting face-off against a waning Sharks team that are just three points above the Bulls in the South African Group standings and a loss for the Sharks and a win against the Bulls against the Sunwolves will mean that the Pretoria-based outfit then need to win one more game, against the Cheetahs, to make it into Super Rugby play-offs.
Marais has not lost hope that his charges can still pull it out of the fire and see themselves in the play-offs against all the odds.
Marais’ team no longer have their fate in their own hands and will now have to rely heavily on the goodwill of the Cheetahs and the Sunwolves to strike a fatal blow on the Sharks if the play-offs are going to be a tangible dream.
“Unfortunately I never wanted to be in this situation where you have to depend on someone else but the Lions beat the Sharks and we thought the Jaguares were one of the sides that we could beat.
“The only thing that worried me about them is that they played three Tests in a row without four players and they played two weeks in a row in the same conditions. The Sunwolves are going to be a difficult team because they have nothing to lose. We’ll have to get five points and hopefully the Cheetahs do us a favour. But we are only focusing on what we can control at the moment and that is winning the game,” Marais said yesterday.
The coach reflected on their disappointing defeat at the hands of the Jaguares in Buenos Aires on Saturday and his response was out of character by apportioning blame to natural elements.
Marais also belives that the injuries suffered in the first half by Roelof Smit, Lizo Gqoboka and Burger Odendaal were detrimental to his team putting together any meaningful phases of play.
“We obviously made a lot of mistakes and the conditions didn’t allow us to play the rugby we planned to play. We trained in rainy conditions the whole week but that was nothing compared to what happened to what we faced on the day of the game. It didn’t help that we lost Roelof in the first minute and Lizo Gqoboka and Burger Odendaal in the 20th and 30th minute of the game and it made it more difficult.
“We had some scoring opportunities and we did not capitalise; we had 12 and they had eight and we only scored once and they scored three times. I’m obviously very disappointed in the loss and one can never prepare for the weather.
“It is momentum loss, we won the attack and then we had the moment when Jamba Ulengo lost the ball with an open tryline and from there they get turnover ball and score. So it is a momentum thing. If you look at our preparation from the week leading up to the game it was brilliant and unfortunately the conditions and execution wise we were not good and the errors were just too many.” - The Star