The Bulls may have taken a step back from openly declaring they are fit and ready to challenge for the Super Rugby title, but stand-in captain Victor Matfield did not mince his words when stating their intent ahead of their highly anticipated derby against the Stormers at Loftus Versfeld tomorrow.
There has been no talk of their ultimate goal in this World Cup year nor have they hyped up their formidable Springbok-laden squad as one of the main title contenders.
Instead Matfield played open cards with how the Bulls intend on playing their rugby tomorrow and for the rest of the season which will be a far cry from their perceived 10-man rugby that served them well in times gone by.
Not that the Bulls will completely unshackle themselves from their fetish for physically dominating their opposition and winning the arm wrestle in the set-pieces, but the order of the day will be their desire to quench their thirst of scoring a deluge of tries.
Nobody knows better thanMatfield the value of scoring tries at it was him at the helm of the Bulls in 2007, 2009 and 2010 when they outscored every team in all three campaigns to be crowned champions.
Since their last triumph four years ago, the Bulls have struggled to replicate their dominance on the try-scoring charts and as such Matfield is calling for a return to some of their old ways.
“We want to go out and score tries.
“This competition if you don’t score tries you won’t win it.
“If you look at the stats every year the team that scores the most tries is always the team that wins the competition.
“So it is about scoring tries and we’ve worked hard on that especially in broken field play and hopefully we can score some nice tries this year,” Matfield said.
The Bulls stand-in captain also believes that there could be no better opposition than the Stormers for the Bulls to test their new approach as the Cape side is renowned for the expansive game.
As wary as Matfield is of how easily the expansive approach could be their Achilles heel, he is adamant that if all their structures are in place then employing their opponents’ tactics on them could be the winning formula.
“If you look at their team they’ve got a very quick back three with Juan de Jongh at 13 who is a good stepper.
“So they are dangerous from turnover ball, so hopefully we won’t give them too much of that.
“Hopefully we can hold onto the ball and especially with our defence we can force some turnovers and from there that’s normally where the tries lie. Hopefully we can get those turnovers and turn them into points,” said Matfield. - The Star