Let me be quite frank on the future of the 3 SA teams in the above tournament, In that regard one has to look at what happened at the URC matches thus far this year because that should be an indicator of what one can expect from what will happen during the upcoming torunament starting on Satirday,
In the URC this year the situation is as follows:-
- The Bulls - 6 matches played - 3 matches lost
- The Sharks - 6 matches played - 5 matches lost,
- The Stormers - 6 matches played - 6 matches won.
So what went wrong woth the Sharks and Bulls in the URC series, Let us be blunt both the Bulls and the Sharks have competitive forwards - but they lost matches because their backlines misfired, In the matches thus far. So can that be corrected?
Lets look at the present situation. In the one match for the Bulls where Polalrd played in at flyhalfthe Bulls lost the match and the act is in that match Pollard was not up to standard. There Inside centers are Vorster and Serfontein - both are not up to standard, In the case of the Sharks Esterhuizen and Hooker played in two matches - the one match against the weakest team in the URC which they won - in the rest the backline misfired and they do not even have a flyhalf where things can be corrected.
In Round 1 the Bulls have a home game against Bordeaux - the present top French team in the tournament. I frankly cannot see the Bulls winning in that match, Bordeaux has a string of top class players in their backline and the Bulls will as a result lose the match - even with Pollard as flyhalf. An even bigger disaster for the Sharks would be their away game against Toulouse - the second strongest team in the tournament, This could well be a cricket score equivalent reflected n Rugby.
The Stormers first game is an away match against Bayonne In their matches this year Sacha and Willemsse played in only one match - the one against Benetton - and the Stormers for the rest played without their best two players away on Springbok duty. The two mentioned players will play on Friday and I believe - bearing in mind in all their matches the Stormers played 15 man rugby - they wil beat Bayonne.
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