It may not have been particularly pretty, but the Bulls vs Stormers clash seems to have been physically tough on the players, with both sides suffering injuries.
In the Cape, fullback Jaco Taute won’t be fit for the trip to Durban this weekend after taking a big knock to the crown jewels in their 17-25 loss to the Bulls in Pretoria.
An obvious solution would be to bring in Joe Pietersen at fullback, allowing Elton Jantjies to focus on just his running game. But Peter Grant is back in training, and the temptation must be huge to bring him straight back into the side
Centre Juan de Jongh, who missed the trip to Pretoria with a hamstring strain, trained on Monday, but will need to pass a fitness test on Tuesday.
No surprise as prop Pat Cilliers’ concussion test was positive on Monday – he showed no symptoms after taking a knock to the head against the Bulls. That move reeked heavily of manipulated granny scrums given the heat the Cape side were taking up front.
Scrumhalf Nic Groom sat out training on Monday but he will be fine for selection against the Sharks.
Meanwhile, in Pretoria …
Dewald Potgieter suffered medial knee ligament damage, and Jacques Potgieter is likely to miss the Bulls tour after being ruled out for between three and four weeks.
They also lost the services of flanker Deon Stegmann and midfielder JJ Engelbrecht to injuries for this weekend. Stegmann is struggling with a hamstring strain, while Engelbrecht has a hip flexor issue.
With the Bulls taking on the lowly Western Force this weekend, it might be an ideal opportunity to give IRB Junior Player of the year Jan Serfontein a run. Although it would come as a surprise were Francois Venter not to crack the nod ahead of him.
Supersport.com report that Akona Ndungane’s ankle injury is a thing of the past, while both Wilhelm Steenkamp and Dean Greyling will be able to tour. Steenkamp (wrist injury) will resume training next week while Greyling has one or two weeks to go before he can return from his stress fracture injury in his foot.
Tank, why do you not send all your batches of daily content in a single email rather than individually? It would be easier on the Inbox and certainly slicker to have all content in a single daily email feed.
Great call. I have changed the setting to send out a mail twice daily, and will see what happens … Sorry, I am no techie. But agree that this is worth sorting out … Grunt has gone from a single post per day to 6 stories every day, hence the change … Sorry
also possibly post spoiler alert as the subject of the result emails to avoid the issue of not having watched the pvred version as yet..
That also seems to be sorted as the mails comes through with a “Daily Digest” heading … and not the heading of the actual article … Did you guys receive this morning’s mail?
@ Jono : If by now, you haven’t heard or read that the Stormers lost, then you probably never will (or you live in the outskirts of Timbaktu).
I reckon it will be a good call to give Serfontein a run.
Do you really think Serfontein needs protecting from Super Rugby? He is the biggest talent at center in years and if I was a Bulls supporter I would cry every time I see WO start ahead of him.
Also keen to see him play …
If I were a Stormers fan I’d be glad Taute is out, he was quite rubbish against the bulls, in fact, all the Lions loan players didn’t play well all weekend with the exception of Franco VD Merwe who I’ve been a fan of since I watched him bat at the Sharks/Dolphins game strangely enough, but he has justified my belief and made a huge impact on the sharks “engine room”