Roar Guru
The Bulls hosts the Rebels at Loftus Versfeld. Join The Roar for live scores and a blog of the match from 11:05pm (AEST).
This is a battle between two foreign coaches who should be fish out of water, but seem to be comfortably settled into their jobs.
The first is a South African who was evicted from his beloved Western Australia. The other is a New Zealander who can take the lion’s share of the credit for the Johannesburg-based Golden Lions.
They are both changing how their teams played. The Bulls were tame a few games ago, but last week, we were able to witness some of the creative, powerful and skilled football that you would expect 11,500 kilometres east of Pretoria.
The Rebels have never won in South Africa. Morever, their most potent try maker – Will Genia – is injured. This is bad for the Melburnians, because Genia has a competition-high eight try assists so far, averaging one every 55 minutes.
The Rebels need to be competitive for a lot more than 55 minutes, especially in the high veldt, but the books have given them only a 4.35 chance to win.
Prediction
The Rebels should improve since the Jaguares’ stolen win last week, which followed a hammering by the Hurricanes in Melbourne.
But not enough to turn things around in a high-altitude match.