Wing Sebastian de Klerk feels that the Bulls will maintain an attacking mindset for Saturday’s vital United Rugby Championship clash against the Sharks – and will not be overwhelmed by their defence issues.
The Pretoria side will travel to Kings Park (4.05pm kick-off) hoping to finish on top of the log, but that will be dependent on what Munster do against Ulster later on Saturday in Limerick.
The Irish giants are on 63 points, two ahead of the Bulls, so they have their destiny in their hands.
But the bigger picture for the Bulls is to go all the way and grab the trophy on June 22, whether that would be at Loftus Versfeld or Thomond Park, and they were able to refine a few aspects of their game during last week’s bye ahead of the forthcoming home quarter-final.
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Most of the talk around the Bulls lately has been about their defence, after they conceded 34 points and 35 points in victories over Glasgow and Benetton at Loftus.
But they also scored 40 and 56 in those encounters, and they wouldn’t want to move too far from that template – especially with the likes of De Klerk, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Canan Moodie, Willie le Roux and Embrose Papier in the backline.
“There is a lot of attention on the defence at the moment, but I think our defence coaches are working really hard on it – and they have been the whole season,” the 24-year-old former Boland Landbou pupil said yesterday.
“For most of the games, we defended exceptionally well. There were games where we slipped up a bit, but we definitely worked on it.
“I don’t think so much that our defence is now in trouble, or that we should panic. But we worked on things that we did wrong and things that we could do better, and I believe in the Sharks game there will be a much better performance in the defence.
“We will definitely continue attacking as we have, and score as many tries as possible. Our coaches have worked very hard on our defence and attack, so that we can find those gaps and score so many points.
“We will definitely keep focusing on that, but the players also have a standard, and we don’t want to concede so many tries – even though we score such a lot of points.
“But while we want fewer points against us, no one feels like they have to panic or something. When it comes to the big games where we really have to defend (better), we will be able to do it.”
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It won’t be as easy to pile up the points at Kings Park, though, with Durban’s humid weather conditions making handling tricky.
The Sharks are also confident after claiming the Challenge Cup title by beating Gloucester in London last week, and even though they might rest many of their stalwart Springboks, they will be determined to end a disappointing URC campaign on a high.
“We can play our game there. We will be at sea level, so will have some more oxygen as well. We will play the same type of rugby if the opportunities are there, so our mindset will stay the same in terms of wanting to score tries,” De Klerk said.
“We can’t control which side they will pick, and it doesn’t really matter to us, because we are prepping the same, either way.
“For us as a backline, we’ve done our prep on them and we know where we want to target them and put them under pressure.
“I don’t want to elaborate too much on it, but we are very excited to go there. We haven’t won there in a while, and there are actually not a lot of teams that have won there and scored many tries.
“So, we would really like to make a statement, go out there and put up a very good performance.”