The Vodacom Bulls emerged from the weekend’s Vodacom United Rugby Championship quarterfinals as the only South African team remaining, as the top four seeds cemented their place in a semifinal shootout this coming weekend.
The Bulls win over Benetton secured them a massive home semifinal against Irish juggernaut side Leinster, who dispatched Ulster in their quarterfinal.
And while it would be strange to see the Bulls as underdogs on their home turf of Loftus Versfeld, where they have only lost one game in the last three seasons to a side from Europe, Leinster’s solid win over the Bulls in the league stages, plus their desperation for some sort of silverware will make them the most dangerous opposition yet for Jake White’s side.
White acknowledged that he saw his team as underdogs in the much-anticipated clash, but would be leaning on some of the knowledge they had built up in playing Leinster in order to put themselves into the final.
“So we probably got no chance against Leinster and no chance against Munster, in everyone’s eyes. Probably two of the best clubs in the world,” White said in assessing his side’s chances.
“But that’s sometimes a nice place to be. There is 160 minutes of rugby left in this season and Benetton showed today that if you play well you can win a knock-out game.”
Despite losing two World Cup winning wingers this week - Kurt-Lee Arendse joined Canan Moodie in undergoing surgery for a minor fracture (Arendse has a cheek fracture and Moodie a fractured index finger) - White said there was little that he needed to tell his players in the lead-up to Saturday’s semifinal in terms of motivation.
“If it’s Leinster, I don’t have to say anything. They drilled us. What am I going to say that’s going to make them feel differently about getting up for this game?”
But White was going to draw from the semifinal in URC 1 that saw the Bulls score a major upset and beat Leinster in Dublin.
“The one really positive thing is they beat us 31-3 in the opening game the first year, and we beat them in the semifinals at Leinster. So it’s not something that hasn’t been done by our group.
“We are the only South African team that has ever played Leinster’s full-strength side and this will be the third time. There is no other franchise that has played Leinster’s full-strength side.
“In three years, not one of the other franchises has faced them. When they came here, they brought their second stringers and at the beginning of the season when we toured there with the South African sides, they were at the World Cup.
“But there’s a positive to that. It means we’ve played their best players – this is the third time. And if you play Rafael Nadal three times, by the third time you learn a lot more than the first time you face him,” White added.