Bulls ready to rumble in heavyweight clash against the Sharks

Cape Town - The gloves are off, and it’s time for a royal rumble …

Now, it’s not a heavyweight boxing clash we’re talking about, but tonight’s United Rugby Championship showdown between the Bulls and Sharks at Loftus Versfeld (5.05pm kick-off) will resemble two fighters going toe to toe.

While the Bulls have got back into the winner’s circle with consecutive victories over the Lions over the past fortnight, they haven’t been able to find the fluidity that was a trademark of their back to back Currie Cup title triumphs last year.

On attack, there have been glimpses of the smooth rhythm seen before from Jake White’s side, but too many handling errors and wrong options have blighted their ball-in-hand approach.

The line-outs have probably been the one consistently good area, but there has been a lack of precision in the scrums, driving mauls and the breakdown work.

White has now seen enough, and with conditions set to be perfect in Pretoria today, with a high of 30 degrees forecast, now is the time for the Bulls to put their best foot forward.

“The only thing I’d like to see is how we translate what we’ve been doing on the training field into the game. We’ve trained incredibly well over the last three weeks,” the former Springbok coach said yesterday after making three changes to the starting line-up.

“I’d like to see us translate that into a match-day fixture. I thought there were times in the game that we probably played quite well in both those (Lions) games, and against the Stormers at the back-end.

“We just don’t want situations where either the weather or the tempo of the game … I’m hoping that tomorrow, the referee (AJ Jacobs) allows us to play a bit more quicker. I think the last couple of weeks, we’ve been a bit