Emotional Pote lashes listless Bulls

Bulls coach Pote Human (right) attacked his team’s attitude after their 56-20 mauling at the hands of the Chiefs in their weekend Super Rugby match at Loftus Versfeld, saying they need to take a long look at themselves after “not pitching at all” for the game.

“We didn’t pitch at all, I think they still thought they were on their bye week. I gave them last week off and it looked like they were still off today. It’s a humiliation for us. From the kick-off it looked like the Chiefs love Loftus, we were flat and they had all the energy. We were off our game, very poor, they were good but we allowed them to look even better.

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“I really hope this is just a blip, we know that we are much better than this. It’s a bad one to take and if we play like this we’ll never get close to the play-offs. We just didn’t get the ball and we struggled to get out of our half. We expected them to come with another level in terms of intensity, but we were just not able to counter that. We need to look at ourselves in the mirror and come back stronger,” Human said after their worst defeat at home since going down 62-24 to the Crusaders in 2017.

What would have caused Bulls fans the most trips to pharmacies for indigestion would have been the way the Chiefs thoroughly dominated up front against a listless home pack.

“They were much more physical than us, they bullied us,” Human admitted.

“We didn’t get any quality ball and when we did have possession we just threw the ball away. I’m emotional now but we have to ask ourselves ‘Is this our best?’. We will have to bring our best next week because I know we are much better than this.

“We played such good rugby against the South African teams, so this is very frustrating, I expect much more from us,” the bitterly disappointed coach said.

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