Reading trough all the web sites, News blogs and Sports Blogs, I started to feel uncomfortable. I am not used to the “we all stand behind the Bulls” as well as “we support the Bulls”,  it is making me uneasy.Where are you Saint, we need someone to chop us down to size a bit.

The words of the song “Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble”, by Mac Davis, started ringing in my ears.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoRPohOA8WI&feature=related[/youtube]

(I thought this might fit in well here, seeing as it is usually me and a lot of muppits here)

Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble
when you’re perfect in every way.
I can’t wait to look in the mirror
cause I get better loking each day.
To know me is to love me
I must be a hell of a man.
Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble
but I’m doing the best that I can. 

But let a biased Bull supporter tell you where I feel , where the Bulls are at present.

The stats are all well known, we have now won 6 out of 6, we failed to get 2 bonus points only from a perfect 30 available. Morné Steyn is leading the top points scorer table with 124 points. We have 3 players in the top 10 try scorers. So I’m doing the best that I can, I wont bring out more perfect stats.

I will now deal with a few things I read in the press.

SA Rugby says:

The Bulls dominated the set-pieces, built the phases and the overwhelming pressure told when Pierre Spies muscled his way over in the 10th minute.

However the expected procession did not materialise as the Bulls, having perhaps been lulled into complacency, squandered scoring chances and made sloppy errors that allowed the Force to flick the ball around, take it wide, and create the kind of unstructured play their high-flying visitors would have wanted to avoid.

My take on this is that we are wandering around in fairyland, thinking we are invincible. It was nice to score an average of 6 tries per match in the first 3 games but since our bye-week we were easy to read and are so predictable. The referees have slowed down on penalizing the “daylight offenses” and all of a sudden the run-like-hell-with-everything was easy to read.

What we need to do is to vary it, play with the head. The Bulls tend to make the game too fast. Vary the speed of play. Do not wait for halftime, do it during a move. Yes we can and should be more lethal, we have the experience and the right players.

Rugby 365 says:

Bizarrely the Bulls could not convert all their possession inside the 22 into points and spurned opportunities as there were too many handling errors and turnovers close to the tryline and were evidently becoming more and more frustrated.

I feel this could easily be rectified, the speed of play is getting out of control. Like I said, too fast might not be better. More accuracy is needed, more patience and more structure.

Matfield being incensed by referee Pearce’s decision not to penalise the Force for a seemingly illegal steal right under their own posts.

Both Matfield and Fourie du Preez must get their relationship with the referees right. John Smit is in a constant bickering with the referees, the once clever Springbok Captain is querying too many decisions. Once you start doing that referees get fed up during game time and you lose that special respect or consideration from a referee. Rather let some go and do not argue about 50/50 calls.

Kick your penalties

The South Africans exuded early confidence when they shunned two kickable penalties in the first five minutes in an effort to score a try.

Morné Steyn is one of the Bulls’ most dangerous weapons. We must keep him “hot” and firing on all cylinders all the time. Do not make him wait for decisions from the Captain, he must get us on the score board, get us rolling. I get the feeling that he is not sure what is next as happened with the last kick of the game, everything was kicked to the corner at that stage and we needed one more try for the bonus point. He was making ready to go for the corner. Then Matfield instructed him to go for the posts. It was a successful kick this time but the whole idea is to keep him in the groove.

At the moment the Bulls strongest weapon is the rolling maul, the use thereof is very impressive.

Our line-outs was always a strength, we still use it correctly.

We have arguably the World’s best scrumhalf in Fourie du Preez but he is not playing at his best. If Du Preez could stop coaching the referee and play the ball faster and more accurately we would improve by another 15%.

Wynand Olivier is red hot but is becoming too predictable….. or is it the game plan?

What we need to do now is manage proper rest for our senior and star players.

Anyway, after all this talk we are still in a brilliant position right now. I cannot see this team imploding. Another win or two in the next games will bring our biggest enemy to the fore….. complacency.

Complacency

I feel we have two of the best people in our camp to deal with possible complacency, Heynecke Meyer and Frans Ludeke and with a captian like Victor Matfield it will continue to be “Hard to be humble” as a supporter. I will try my best.