More fire is needed in the bellies of the underperforming Bulls players when they are on defensive duty against Connacht in a crunch United Rugby Championship clash in Ireland on Friday, coach Johan Ackermann said.
After winning their opening home matches against the Ospreys (53-40) and Leinster (39-31) the Bulls came unstuck against Ulster in their first match on the road when they lost 28-7 last week.
Ackermann said hard work would be done on the training pitch after the Bulls conceded 14 tries in their opening three URC matches.
There was withering criticism from Bulls president Willem Strauss, after his team slipped to an insipid defeat against Ulster.
“Arguably our worst performance since joining the URC,” he wrote in a WhatsApp group message.
“Terrible effort. Not interested and disconnected. We’ve now conceded 14 tries in just three games. We need urgency and intensity asap.”
When asked about Strauss’s criticism, Ackermann said: “I’m not going to comment on that.
“There are a lot of people who have comments. As long as everybody is doing their job as well as they can.
“I said to the players that the reality is families go through tough times.
“Show me one family that is perfect, that doesn’t fight, or one marriage or relationship.
“And we are in a relationship between players, staff, and so on.
“We are in this together. There is no hiding, there is no easy way out.”
The Bulls coach said his team would have to up their defensive effort against Connacht.
“Ultimately, it’s tackle dominance,” he said.
“There are too many times where someone has to cover for someone else, and then it’s a ripple effect.
“There are a lot of factors I can hide behind because our preparation wasn’t great.
“We didn’t have numbers, injuries, and so on.
“Maybe we were undercooked from a contact point of view, and now you try to play catch-up during the season.
“We need to fix it, and we have to fix it quickly if we want to concede fewer points.
“Defence does win you games. They defended us during big periods in the first half.
“We are going to constantly work on that and make sure that from us as coaches to players we take responsibility to improve that area.
“Ultimately, all we can do is look at ourselves and make sure we fix the things we need to fix and stand up and be accountable.
“You can’t run away from trouble. Show me one thing in life you can run away from.
“You have to face life head-on and that’s what we’re going to do. I said to them we can sit and sulk or we can do something.
“I’m sure, as South Africans, we have shown them more than once that we can stand up and hopefully we can do that this week against Connacht.”
Ackermann said the integration of the Boks into his squad had been challenging
“Obviously, we kept it simple,” he said.
“We closed the playbook a little bit more to make it a bit easier.
“You’re not going to have 10 different plays and try to do every playbook move in the first week when you’ve got seven changes.
“So the plays were there, and if we look at the opportunities we had, it was just, we didn’t finish.
“There were opportunities, and then it’s just our individual errors that cost us.
“We lost the ball, I think we lost the ball four times in the carries.
“So it wasn’t so much just the players who came in and it wasn’t just so much that they didn’t know how to play. It was more skill and errors and that’s always going to be a challenge.”
SA fixtures:
Friday: 8.45pm: Connacht vs Bulls.
Saturday: 1.45pm: Lions v Scarlets, 4pm: Sharks v Ulster, 9.45pm: Zebre v Stormers
The Herald
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.