THE Vodacom Bulls will have to make do with one of their main attacking threats in this weekend’s United Rugby Championship Grand Final after eighthman Cameron Hanekom tore a hamstring in the Pretoria team’s 25-13 semi-final win against the HollywoodBets Sharks over the weekend.
Coach Jake White’s Bulls take on Leinster in Saturday’s 6pm kickoff URC Grand Final at Croke Park in Dublin.
And with Hanekom unavailable, it forces White into a rethink about his most potent loose-forward combination ahead of a massive clash against an in-form Leinster team who dominated Glasgow Warriors 37-19 in Saturday’s other semi-final at the Aviva Stadium.
Breakout Player
Losing Hanekom, voted as this season’s URC Breakout Player, after scoring three tries along with his 118 ball carries, beating 39 defenders and making 27 offloads – the fourth highest behind Leinster’s Bok import RG Snyman with 43 and Stormers fullback Warrick Gelant with 36 passes into space.
Defensively Hanekom has also not shirked his responsibilities this season, making 153 hits alongside Bulls hooker Johan Grobbelaar as the team’s main big hitters.
Losing a player with Hanekom’s all-round ability in the backrow is certainly gutting, but White, who coached the Springboks to the 2007 Rugby World Cup title, knows he has enough depth and experience to call on to replace the Bok rookie.
White, however, has to decide which of the veterans Nizaam Carr and Marcel Coetzee (both 34 years old) will get to wear the No.8 jumper on Saturday, while versatile looseforward and back-to- back World Cup winner with the Boks Marco van Staden (29) also able to provide cover behind the scrum.
Experience
And the Bulls will need to rely on all of that experience when they come up against a Leinster side with world-class backrowers like Jack Conan, Caelan Doris and 2022 World Rugby Player Of The Year, Josh van der Flier.
Meanwhile, White says Hanekom, who might also miss out on Springbok Test matches in July, was gutted about not getting to play in the URC title match.
The Bulls boss says:
Obviously, he is very upset… Look, I said to his parents now in the change room, he is 21, you forget when I started coaching, 21-year-old forwards weren’t invited to Northern Transvaal training sessions.
If they were, it was generally to be cannon fodder for the old men to bash them on a Monday night, so he has jumped the queue because he is so talented and he feels a bit down now, but he must not forget he is only 21-years-old and there is still a lot of rugby that he is gonna be involved in over the next couple of years.
Of the win against the Sharks, and seeing his side put up a massive defensive performance, White adds:
It is a massive win for us as a club. Three finals in four years and any club will tell you that it’s a massive achievement.
Scrum Dominance
Ahead of Saturday’s game against Leinster, the Bulls boss however hopes his team gets more reward from set pieces after totally dominating the Sharks in the scrum.
White adds of how their scrum did not get much love from the referee at the weekend:
I must say we were not rewarded early on for smashing them in the scrum. I thought we could have been rewarded a little bit more.
I mean, thank goodness that intercept try was offsides because for me [pushing them back in the scrum] could have been a penalty. I know what the refs are gonna say. They didn’t do anything illegal and they were just running backwards and I have seen in many games where the scrum runs backwards and it’s a penalty anyway.
So, you know, I would have thought we would have gotten more love at scrum time but, what I can say is that we didn’t get love at the scrum and still ended up winning the game. That will be a massive positive for us when we talk this week [ahead of the final].
