“Morne has been a stalwart of this team and that’s why he has been in the alignment camps with the national team.”
Bulls Director of Rugby Jake White lauded the performance of veteran flyhalf Morne Steyn in Saturday’s 20-16 win over the Stormers at Cape Town Stadium.
As the only two unbeaten teams in the Rainbow Cup SA competition, the Bulls and the Sharks are heading for a top-of-the-table showdown this weekend at Loftus with Steyn likely to be a vital cog.
“Morne has been a stalwart of this team and that’s why he has been in the alignment camps with the national team,” said White, indicating Steyn might be in line for a second shot at the British and Irish Lions.
White said Steyn is tactically astute and knew how the Bulls wanted to play.
He said while it was a “different way”, it had been a strategic ploy to suffocate the Stormers attack.
“To be fair we conceded 19 penalties to eight, so to get a result when you concede so many penalties and a yellow card is pleasing,” said White.
“But it’s obviously something we have to look at during the week,” he added.
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White said it wasn’t just the scrum penalties, but other situations where they had to be a bit more clever.
Stormers coach John Dobson meanwhile said it had been really disappointing losing two close matches in a row.
“One could argue we should have won both. It has taken a toll on the guys,” he said.
Stormers captain Steven Kitshoff added the controversial captain’s challenge definitely has an influence on the momentum of the game.
“There were yellow card incidents the previous week because of the call and against the Bulls there was the card to Nizaam Carr, so it does take away from the flow of the game,” he said.
Kitshoff said as a team they didn’t want to play “touch rugby” and said teams still wanted to be physical.
“It’s not nice to cite players for foul play, but it is an attempt to get rid of it.”