Bulls’ slow poison wears down Zebre in bonus-point win in Parma

Cape Town — It wasn’t the most eye-pleasing display, but the Bulls eventually rolled up their sleeves and found some rhythm on attack to secure a 45-7 bonus-point victory over Zebre in Parma on Friday night.

The Pretoria side scored six tries on the night, and the five log points keep the Bulls in the playoff race in the United Rugby Championship after disappointing defeats to the Stormers and Sharks in Pretoria in recent weeks.

Coach Jake White would have been a worried man in the first half, though, as his team battled to get going at the Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi.

They didn’t get much joy from their driving mauls and committed a number of handling errors once again — something that has plagued their attack throughout the URC.

Marcell Coetzee and his teammates were unable to string any meaningful number of phases together, with the backs in particularly losing the ball in contact too easily.

Zebre, who were missing a number of Italian internationals in Six Nations duty, managed to hang in by disrupting the South Africans in defence and making the game as scrappy as possible.

Things went from bad to worse for the visitors when captain Coetzee was given a yellow card by referee Adam Jones for taking out a Zebre player in the air in the 23 rd minute, and it looked like it was turning into another Italian nightmare for the Bulls following their drubbing in the Rainbow Cup final against Benetton in Treviso last year.

Zebre took full advantage of the one-man advantage immediately as flyhalf Antonio Rizzi stepped past Madosh Tambwe to score after a solid lineout drive from the forwards to put the hosts 7-0 up.

But the Bulls were able to close the gap with a Chris Smith three-pointer, and the Bulls No 10 set up his team’s