The Bulls tried to play a funny game by bringing in all their Under 21 players that played for the senior side this year - even Jan Serfontein was playing - but it did not produce the goods for them and the WP youngsters won 30-23.
The question is what went wrong - since the Bulls was considered as virtually unbeatable. The answer is they were beaten amongst the forwards. The Bulls scrum went haywire a number of times and they were constantly on the back foot. Their line-outs were good - but they were unable to stop the rolling mauls of the WP youngsters.
Amongst the backline players it was clear that Swiel got the better of Pollard - Swiel has ball sense in abundance - Pollard tried to replicate Morne Steyn - and his play was dull and unimaginative. Serfontein was watched like a hawk and did not produce much - bar one good break that was snuffed out by the WP afterwards. The best Bulls backline player by far was Wlliam Small-Smith - he scored one of their tries and made the second one by drawing in defenders.
Looking at the performance today - there was one aspect that worried me very much - a number of Bulls Under 21 forwards formed a significant part of the Under 20 2013 WC team - where the SA forwards struggled badly virtually throughout the tournament. If these players could be outplayed by the WP forwards today - most of whom were in fact Under 20 - why were the Bulls so overwhelmingly represented in the WC team?
Second issue - the Bulls Under 19 team did very well in the Final and I as impressed by especially the props who played today - there are some real monsters amongst them.
