With their convincing 52-17 victory against the Lions, during which the Bulls scored seven tries, Johan Ackermann’s team showed that their success in both matches during their recent European tour were no fluke and that they are back in the race for a place in the United Rugby Championship (URC) play-off rounds.

With the arrival of a four-week recess in the tournament, the Bulls are currently seventh on the log, while four of the teams above them have also played one game more than the men from Loftus.

When the Bulls lost to the Stormers by five points after a hard-fought battle in the Cape a month ago, the armchair pundits and wanton ‘rugby experts’ around the braai fire began to mock and write them off.

When Johan Ackermann’s troops conceded nine tries against the Bristol Bears at Loftus a week later and lost 49-61, there was talk of ‘disgrace’ and a ‘crisis’ and the malicious ‘experts’ began to spread all sorts of bogus stories without any substance online about players who were supposedly ‘too big for the game’ and that Jake White, who was apparently a victim of these players’ so-called ‘arrogance’, was laughing up his sleeve at the ‘karma’ that was active at Loftus.

Criticism was expressed by every quasi-‘expert’ against Ackermann, with firm statements that he is being exposed as a coach whose abilities are actually overrated and that he is trying to implement the wrong game plan at Loftus.

The fact that the tough match against the Stormers was in the balance until the last seconds and could have gone either way and that the Bulls themselves scored seven tries against Bristol in a bizarre match where the point difference was ultimately only 12, eluded these critics. However, statistics showed that the Bulls had indeed made progress on many levels under Ackermann’s leadership, but honest analysis of the team’s performances clearly indicated a problem with communication and commitment in defence.

There are some truths about rugby, as a team sport, that will never change. This was the case in the amateur era and it will always remain so in the professional era. One of the most important facts in this regard is that a team whose house is not in order and where proper cohesion does not exist will always struggle on the field. A team sport is often compared to a chain and it is common knowledge that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. So, you can put together a rugby team full of stars and appoint the best coach in the world, but if there is no cohesion, cooperation, focus and good leadership, teams that cannot compete with you on paper will beat you on the field.

The perception seemed to exist that Ackermann expected his team to play only adventurous running rugby and to neglect other aspects of the game. Have the ‘experts’ who fed this perception forgotten the detail of how his Lions team dominated the SuperRugby competition a decade ago?

Have they forgotten that that Lions team with a tight five made up of men like Jacques van Rooyen, Julian Redelinghuys, Ruan Dreyer, Dylan Smith, Malcolm Marx, Akker van der Merwe, Robbie Coetzee, Corné Fourie, Franco Mostert, Andries Ferreira and Lourens Erasmus dominated set piece play up front, while loose forwards like Jaco Kriel, Warren Whiteley, Kwagga Smith, Cyle Brink and Ruan Ackermann could face their New Zealand and Australian opponents on equal footing? These men did the hard work up front and laid the foundation for the exciting rugby that the backs could dish out at the time.

Perceptions are usually the oxygen for the reasoning of doomsayers and suddenly there were claims that the Bulls of 2026 don’t have the ability to play that kind of rugby. As if Ackermann’s Lions team back then only played running rugby.

Anyone who knows anything about team sports and the background against which Ackermann signed on at Loftus Versfeld to coach the Bulls should have been able to see that the game plan and coaching were not the reason for the team’s problems when things started to go wrong since October last year.

The way in which Ackermann managed these problems is a testament to his character as a person and leader and his abilities as a coach and manager of people.

After their tour of Europe, it seems that Ackermann has now neatly lined up his troops and Bulls fans can take heart again for the rest of the season. In fact, the Ackermann era at Loftus no longer looks as doomed as the many armchair pundits wanted us to believe a month ago.

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