Blue Bulls start Currie Cup campaign with good win over WP
The Bulls started their Currie Cup campaign with a full-points performance against WP at Loftus Versfeld.
The Blue Bulls started their Currie Cup campaign on a winning note, beating Western Province (WP) at Loftus Versfeld 45-26 on Friday night, scoring six tries and conceding four.
The early kick-off time for a Friday night game and a lack of enthusiasm for the Currie Cup would probably go down in history for the reason of a worst spectator attendance ever for a north-south derby.
Less than 5 000 die-hard Blue Bulls supporters faced the current cold Pretoria weather to support their team.
After a disappointing start, where the two teams relied mainly on strategic kicking in the first twenty minutes, the Blue Bulls crossed the goal line first.
Loose-head prop Pierre Schoeman stole a ball at the breakdown deep in the Bulls’ own half. They worked it through the blind side and Arno Botha found the ball to run about 40 metres before he passed to Piet van Zyl, who finished off.
Suddenly the tempo of the game changed and the Blue Bulls started stepping on the throttle. They kicked less and attacked space with the ball in hand. The course of the game changed and WP’s defence simply could not shut down all the holes.
With persistent attacking play the Blue Bulls managed to score two more tries, ten minutes before half time.
First Jason Jenkins rushed through after Dries Swanepoel took a quick throw-in close to the try-line. Four minutes later Blue Bulls lock Marvin Orie finished off several phases of attacking play.
At halftime the Blue Bulls were leading by 24-0.
The Bulls started the second half as they ended the first half – on attack. Within seven minutes they managed to beat the WP’s defence for the first time in the second half when debutant Jade Stighling broke through in the middle of the field to score under the posts.
Jamba Ulengo was the next man to score for the Blue Bulls, when he picked up a neat little kick from Bjorn Basson.
Unfortunately, the Bulls stopped playing rugby and went into defence-mode in the final twenty minutes and provided WP an opportunity to fight back.
Johnny Kotze, Leolin Zas, Huw Jones and Scott van Breda scored four tries for the Capetonians in the space of 15 minutes while the Blue Bulls were asleep.
The home-team only woke up in the final minutes when Bjorn Basson scored a sixth try. In the end the Bulls did enough to win comfortably, but they would need to work on their concentration throughout a game if they really wanted to be a force in this competition.
SCORERS:
BLUE BULLS: 45
Tries: Piet van Zyl, Jason Jenkins, Marvin Orie, Jade Stighling, Jamba Ulengo, Bjorn Basson. Conversions: Tian Schoeman (6). Penalties: Tian Schoeman (1).
WP: 26
Tries: Johnny Kotze, Leolin Zas, Huw Jones, Scott van Breda. Conversions: Brandon Thomson (3)
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