Scarra Ntubeni

DHL Western Province has been rocked by the loss of hooker Scarra Ntubeni ahead of their first home Absa Currie Cup match of the season against the Vodacom Blue Bulls on Saturday.

Ntubeni was set to replace Tiaan Liebenberg, who is out with a back injury, in the team that beat the EP Kings in Port Elizabeth last week. However, according to coach Allister Coetzee, Ntubeni injured a calf in training and has been forced to withdraw from the team at the 11th hour.

“Unfortunately Scarra picked up a calf injury at training on Tuesday and it has subsequently been confirmed that he will be out for a minimum of 14 days,” said Coetzee.

“It is funny how injuries suddenly make themselves felt in one position. But we have Stefan Coetzee, who started some crucial games for us in Super Rugby, including the away win against the Sharks in Durban, ready to step in for Scarra.”

Mike Willemse, who played ahead of Coetzee in the WP under-21 side last year, has only just returned to the playing field after being away with injury, but he should be in the mix next week.

“We thought we had Scarra available so we had Stephan and Neil Rautenbach training with us during the week. Mikey only played for 40 minutes in his comeback against Border under-21 so we are hoping he will play 60 minutes this week and then he will be ready for Currie Cup after that. Neil trained with us during the week and is an experienced and tough player so we are happy to give him a debut opportunity off the bench this week. He deserves it.”

The change at hooker is the only one to the starting team that did duty in the opening match in Port Elizabeth. There was an expectation that Ruan Botha would return at No 5 lock now that he has recovered from injury, but instead he has been included on what looks a powerful bench. Apart from Botha, further additions to the bench are Rynhardt Elstadt, Brok Harris, Louis Schreuder, Kurt Coleman and Jaco Taute.

The latter missed last week because of a family bereavement and Coetzee explained that after missing a few weeks of training he wanted to ease Taute back into the system, be it at fullback or centre.

“I just want to say that I have full confidence in Cheslin Kolbe at fullback. He is the man who will punish the Bulls if they kick poorly against us,” said the coach.

The headlines at the start of the week suggested the Vodacom Blue Bulls were already in crisis after just one round of the Absa Currie Cup, but that is just one of several reasons for DHL Western Province to be approaching Saturday’s Newlands clash with extreme caution.

Quite apart from the fact that the Bulls are wounded and have something to prove, coach Allister Coetzee knows his men are in exactly the same position they were this time last year, when the Newlands game turned out to be one of just two partial blemishes in a league season that saw them go unbeaten.

Province drew with the Bulls in the opening match when the expectation was that they would win comfortably after the Stormers had easily dealt with the Bulls Super Rugby team at the same venue just three weeks previously.

In fact, while the result reflected a draw in that 2013 game, few who were at Newlands that day would disagree with the contention that the Bulls were the better team, with Jono Ross’ men leading for most of the way before WP came back to force a share of the spoils. For the first 60 minutes, WP did well just to remain in the game.

“We have learned from past experience that the Bulls should always be taken very seriously,” agreed Coetzee.

“Last year you will recall that we beat thrashed them in Super Rugby and then when we played them in the Currie Cup everyone expected us to win easily and we nearly came unstuck. There is no such thing as a weak Bulls team and what we noted about our last game against them in Super Rugby was that although we won 16-0, the Bulls came back strongly after halftime. Once you allow them to get some momentum they become difficult opponents.”

Indeed, the end scoreline of that game, 16-0 to the Stormers, was also the final score. Whereas the Stormers were all over the Bulls in the first half with their attacking game, the Bulls put in a big effort after the break and the momentum shifted. Although the Bulls weren’t able to make any impression on the scoreboard, they did subject the Stormers’ defensive system to a tough second half work-out.

“As always when playing the Bulls, what is going to be important for us is to be up for the physical challenge. We know they are going to come really hard at us, particularly after losing their opening game to the Lions. They have a point to prove and we are going to have to be at our best,” said the WP coach.

WP has good reason to be treading warily as although the Bulls were thrashed by the Lions, they do have greater continuity from Super Rugby than they had last year. Their scrum struggled against the Lions, but then the WP scrum wasn’t that great against the Kings either, while the Bulls’ lineout was one area of their game that appeared to function well at Ellis Park.

“There were aspects of our performance against the Kings that I wasn’t happy with, and obviously our discipline is going to have to improve after all the yellow cards and penalties that we gave away in Port Elizabeth. That cost us a lot of momentum. But most of it is about timing and just requires a few small adjustments.”

“Unlike the Kings, we opted not to play any games in the build-up to the Currie Cup. That was our decision and I am happy with that as the guys have played a lot of rugby this year, but it did mean that there were aspects of our play where we weren’t 100 percent accurate. Against the Bulls we know we won’t be allowed to get away with that so hopefully the 80 minutes we had last week will have helped with our game readiness.”

DHL Western Province team (Revised): 15 Cheslin Kolbe, 14 Kobus van Wyk, 13 Juan de Jongh (Captain), 12 Michael van der Spuy, 11 Seabelo Senatla, 10 Demetri Catrakilis, 9 Nic Groom, 8 Nizaam Carr, 7 Michael Rhodes, 6 Siya Kolisi, 5 Manuel Carizza, 4 Jean Kleyn, 3 Pat Cilliers, 2 Stephan Coetzee, 1 Alistair Vermaak
Replacements: 16 Neil Rautenbach, 17 Brok Harris, 18 Ruan Botha, 19 Rynhardt Elstadt, 20 Louis Schreuder, 21 Kurt Coleman, 22 Jaco Taute.