Ruan Nortje of Vodacom Bulls during the United Rugby ChampionshipTraining Session at Loftus Versfeld Stadium in Tshwane.
It is not how you start but how you finish is a hackneyed adage, but it accurately sums up the Bulls’ United Rugby Championship season.
On Saturday, the Bulls host Munster in a URC quarter-final (1pm kick-off), which is a notable accomplishment when you consider their dark days in the first half of the tournament, the despairing times when they lost seven consecutive matches.
At the heart of those losses was the team’s identity crisis — they had gone from a team big on structure under Jake White to a team overplaying under Johan Ackermann. They were trying to hit sixes off every delivery until it dawned on them to play to their strengths (including their powerful forwards) before unleashing their lethal outside backs.
There was a specific game where you could see the penny dropping, the 47-7 defeat of the Dragons on April 17.
