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South Africa's Bulls players celebrate after scoring a try during the final of the Super 14 rugby match against New Zealand Chiefs at the Loftus Versfeld stadium in Pretoria, South Africa, Saturday May 30, 2009. AP Photo/Themba Hadebe
At the end of their stunning 61 – 17 massacre of the Chiefs the Bulls players and coaching staff formed a circle with linked arm, went down on their knees and with heads bowed gave thanks to their God for the victory. God helps those, however, who help themselves. The Bulls played superbly and were coached superbly.
Fourie du Preez demonstrated once again that he is the best player in world rugby. Every facet of the Bulls play, from the confrontational defence, to a ball-stealing lineout, to abrasive running by forwards and backs, to Bryan Habana’s thief in the night inercepts and to Morne Steyn thumpingly accurate kicking, the Bulls were several classes above the hapless Chiefs.
If this Bulls side can stay together for a couple of years, and it will probably will with the Rugby World Cup coming up in two years time, they can win a couple more Super Rugby titles and set up a South African dynasty to rival the Crusaders.
The Bulls were helped by incredibly dumb tactics on the part of the Chiefs. At the the beginning of the match, and throughout its diastrous course for them, they steadfastly refused to kick for touch, even when they had the safety of kicking out from their own 22.
Moreover, the high kicks the Chiefs put in were not chased. Lelia Masaga is a one-trick winger. He has a certain pace but his chasing and catching of high balls is poor.
He put no pressure on the Bulls back three. As a consequence, the Bulls were able to field the high balls, return them with higher interest and then force mistakes with their own whole-hearted chasing.
The other aspect of the stupid Chiefs tactics is that the Bulls have developed a great fractured ball series of plays which requires the big forwards to rumble forward and then for du Preez to chose the right time for a hard, flat pass to unleash a stacked backline.
The Chiefs also neglected the basic rule of altitude play, too, which is: ‘when in doubt kick it.’
Teams coming to Pretoria have to learn the Bulls game which is let the ball do the work, until you are within striking distance and then occur everything into attack.
Most of the Bulls tries came from mistakes made by the Chiefs trying to do too much inside their own territory.
After giving up the opening try, the Bulls then got their game together and demolished the Chiefs, helped by the Chiefs inability to take the right tactical options. From the kick-off, for example, Sione Lauaki tried to run the ball from inside his 22. He was isolated. The Bulls forced a turnover. Not long after, following a short-arm penalty awarded by Jonathan Kaplan, du Preez was over for a try.
From then on it was all the Bulls. They scored again soon after and the flood gates opened up.
So superior and confident were they that were able to sub most of their stars well before the final whistle in an indication that the match was wrapped up well before its end.
For years the Bulls were a hard team to defeat in the pre-ELV days with their lineout and driving maul. With the maul de-clawed as it were by being able to be collapsed legitmately, the Bulls developed a wider, explosive running game.
Ironically they have mastered this game just when collapsing the maul has become illegal. Will they give up their running game to go back to their old rolling maul game? Hopefully they won’t. But the ability to roll mauls near their opponents tryline will give the Bulls yet another scoring option.
From what they showed this season, winning all of their home matches and then producing the biggest margin and most points ever in a Super Rugby final (the previous record was 36 – 6 by the ACT Brumbies against the hapless Sharks at Canberra in 2001), the Bulls are on the rampage for the next few years.
In the 14 years of Super Rugby, has there ever been a more impressive finals victory? Have the Bulls played the perfect final? I think so.