White selects all his available stars for battle against Cardiff
With the exception of injured Springboks Gerhard Steenekamp and Embrose Papier, Jake White has probably selected his strongest possible Bulls team to chase five league points against Cardiff at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday.
The Bulls have been given a timely boost with the return to the starting XV of Springboks Cameron Hanekom, Marcell Coetzee and Willie le Roux, while Jake White has selected all the big guns in his squad for Saturday’s match.
Hanekom missed out on the round 16 match in Scotland, whilst Coetzee and Le Roux came off the bench.
With this team selection, White showed that he does not want to take any chances in the business end of the United Rugby Championship (URC) tournament and that his team will try hard to get ten league points in their last two league matches and thus improve their chances of finishing second on the log.
Cardiff, who slipped to fifth place on the log after Munster’s victory over Ulster on Friday night, are not yet assured of a place in the top eight for the play-off rounds according to permutations and will therefore also come out with a great effort to try to get maximum league points from the match at Loftus.
On the other hand, the Bulls have a fairly good chance of finishing second on the log if they can win their last two league matches against the two teams from Wales, Cardiff and the Dragons, with full points.
Defending champions Glasgow Warriors have two tough away games against Benetton and Leinster remaining in the league phase, while they are currently only one point ahead of the Bulls on the log.
As the Bulls proved last season, a second-place finish could mean the team potentially playing all of their playoff games on their home ground.
Kick-off time for the game is at 16:00 on Saturday.
BULLS vs CARDIFF RUGBY STARTING XV: 1. Jan-Hendrik Wessels, 2. Johan Grobbelaar, 3. Wilco Louw, 4. Cobus Wiese, 5. JF van Heerden, 6. Marcell Coetzee, 7. Ruan Nortje (c), 8. Cameron Hanekom, 9. Zak Burger, 10. Johan Goosen, 11. Sebastiaan de Klerk, 12. Harold Vorster, 13. David Kriel, 14. Canan Moodie, 15. Willie le Roux
REPLACEMENTS: 16. Akker van der Merwe, 17. Alulutho Tshakweni, 18. Mornay Smith, 19. Jannes Kirsten, 20. Marco van Staden, 21. Keagan Johannes, 22. Devon Williams, 23. Stedman Gans
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