Duane helps Bulls prep for Stormers

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Duane Vermeulen nailed his colours to the mast when he showed up at the Vodacom Bulls captain’s run on Friday to help them plot the demise of the Stormers in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship final. DYLAN JACK reports.

Vermeulen represented the Stormers in the 2010 Super Rugby final and represented the team 89 times between 2009 and 2015, but the Springbok No 8 revealed his allegiance to the Bulls – who he played for between 2019 and 2021 – in the build-up to the URC final.

Vermeulen turned out for Ulster in last week’s semi-final loss against the Stormers and is currently in Cape Town recovering from a knee operation. According to Jake White, the Springbok No 8 joined the Bulls during their final training session to offer some advice on how to stop the Stormers at source on Saturday.

“Duane Vermeulen is coming to have lunch with me,” the Bulls director of rugby said on Friday. “He will join us at the captain’s run this afternoon. We will chat a bit about what happened at the lineouts and mauls and what the plan would be here.

“So I have that base covered. He will join us at training.”

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One of the major challenges facing the Bulls in Saturday’s grand final in Cape Town is the home side’s Springbok-laden pack.

Bok props Steven Kitshoff and Frans Malherbe will lead the Stormers’ charge in the front row and scrums, which is a concern for White, despite the Bulls’ own success in this department.

Adding to the concern is the fact that the Cape Town Stadium is notoriously difficult to scrum on, which won’t be helped if the rain starts to fall on Saturday night.

“Historically, out of the last 80 scrums on that field, there have been 23 resets against different opposition,” said White. “You can’t therefore say that one team is illegally scrumming or the other team. Out of 80 scrums, there have been 23 collapses, something is not right.

“I just wouldn’t want tomorrow, the perception is that the two South African front rankers who are really good players and good scrummagers, and they get the rub of the green just because the front row collapses.

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“I think we have scrummed really well. One of our stats, we’ve got one of the highest number of scrum penalties as well, in our favour. It’s one of those areas where I wouldn’t want a result based on the fact that one scrum collapsed and the perception is that one person caused it, so that team ends up losing.”

The Stormers did plenty of damage against Ulster in the lineouts and mauls, with two of their three tries in the semi-final coming from this area of the game.

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Dylan Jack