If the Stormers opt to not kick the ball into touch for line-outs, they will do so at their peril.
This was the warning from Bulls coach Jake White ahead of on Saturday’s massive United Rugby Championship encounter at the Cape Town Stadium (7pm kick-off).
The Capetonians have battled in the line-outs this season, after the departure of No 5 stalwart Marvin Orie to French club Perpignan, while newly appointed captain Salmaan Moerat has been sidelined with a knee injury.
This has seen Ruben van Heerden and Adré Smith – essentially two No4 locks – operating in the second row, while coach John Dobson has also experimented with different combinations for certain games, such as the Champions Cup clash against Leicester, where Hendré Stassen and Connor Evans were the lock pairing.
Options on attack
So, the Bulls may target the Stormers’ line-out, but they also have other options on attack.
The Bulls have also had to make do without their injured first-choice lock duo, Ruan Vermaak and Ruan Nortjé, for a number of matches, but the young pair of Reinhardt Ludwig and Janko Swanepoel have been outstanding in the engine room.
“It will be an area that we will have a go at, but it’s quite ironic because the stats are a bit different. They’ve got quite an efficient lineout, and they are probably not as good as they used to be, but they are still really high up on the stats compared to other teams,” White said this week.
“But it will be an area where we can, I don’t want to say exploit, but we can put pressure on them.
“But in these sorts of games, the Stormers don’t kick the ball out, and sometimes keeping the ball in-field from our point of view as well is also beneficial, as we’ve got guys like Willie (le Roux), Kurt-Lee (Arendse) and Canan (Moodie), and (Johan) Goosen and Embrose Papier and those guys.
“Having the ball in open field and broken play is also a strength that we don’t want to go away from. We don’t necessarily want to be kicking the ball out and having to set up structured play, where I think one of the areas we’ve been really good at is playing from unstructured ball as well.”
Apart from the strike-power that the Bok back three of Le Roux, Arendse and Moodie possess, centres David Kriel and Stedman Gans have been excellent in providing real impetus to the Bulls attack.
They have made a number of line breaks at close quarters and also fall back to help the outside backs on the counter-attack, where Le Roux’s array of long passes, chip kicks and offloads in the tackle unlock defences.
The Stormers, by contrast, have struggled to generate cohesion in broken play, with fullback Warrick Gelant unable to find the form that made him one of the stars of their URC title success in the 2021-22 season.
Dobson won’t be able to call on injured wing Ben Loader (shoulder), star No 8 Evan Roos (jaw) is set to be ruled out for eight weeks and Bok scrumhalf Herschel Jantjies (leg) is also unavailable.