Bulls assistant Winter expects touring sides to get better with Six Nations completed

Bulls assistant coach Russell Winter said the return of the international players will make their lives tougher in the United Rugby Championship.

The Bulls will be hosting the Dragons at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday and the Welsh side will be bolstered by the arrival of their international contingent.

The Six Nations concluded this past weekend and the travelling teams, over the next two weekends, will ask harder questions of the South African side.

Winter said it was expected that the European teams will struggle without their stars, but will pose a different challenge from this weekend onwards.

"It won't get any easier now with the Six Nations being over, their internationals will be back, so it won't be easy to turn over the travelling sides," Winter said.

"If you lose four or five international players and you want to continue with the momentum you've built, that can be difficult.

"When those players come back, there's going to be a definite change within the urgency because they all have great players and at times, teams go through these phases.

"They'll bounce back when they get their international players back because the teams are far better than the results they displayed."

The Bulls may have nearly gifted Munster an unexpected win, but they wiped the floor with the Scarlets last week.

Winter said they didn't expect that wide a margin of success, but playing at home in the late summer heat and at altitude also presented an opportunity to make up for ground lost at the start of the competition.

"We didn't expect the scores to be what they were and we’re genuinely aware that they have internationals out," Winter said.

"We knew that this was going to be our chance to play really well and put pressure on the travelling sides