Handre Pollard during the Super Rugby match between Vodacom Bulls and Crusaders at Loftus Versfeld on May 10, 2019 in Pretoria, South Africa. (Photo by Anton Geyser/Gallo Images)
Rugbypass, an authoritative, New Zealand-based website will have twitchy Bulls fans even more jittery after they created a meme where they speculate that stand-in skipper and talisman Handre Pollard is fed up with his teammates.
The Springbok flyhalf was caught on camera several times despairing at the mistakes the Bulls made, particularly on defence, during a 13-45 hammering at the hands of the Crusaders at Loftus last weekend.
French and English giants, Montpellier and Bath, are both interested in Pollard’s services with one report stating that Montpellier have already submitted a 20-million Euro bid.
Pollard’s contract expires at the end of this season.
Not that the 25-year-old was blameless – he delivered his most muted performance of the campaign and even overcooked a penalty to touch, which would’ve put the Bulls in an attacking position.
Meanwhile, Ken Borland reports that Bulls coach Pote Human admitted that his side weren’t good enough against the defending champions.
He now faces the inevitable query over whether they have any chance against New Zealand teams as they head off on tour.
The Bulls will visit the Blues and the Highlanders and, having now slipped to seventh, their play-off hopes are on a knife-edge.
“It is a worry and something we have to fix quickly,” said Human.
“We will learn from this game and see where we need to get better. I still think we have the players to win overseas.
“We know we are better thanthis and tonight was just not good enough. We were outplayed, credit to the Crusaders, but they capitalised on our mistakes.
“We played good rugby for about 20 minutes. We were right up there in their territory, but they’re brilliant with any loose ball and we didn’t execute right a couple of times.
“The score is a fair reflection of how far ahead of us they are. They’re a quality side,” he said.
Defensively, the Bulls were embarrassed by the fleetfooted, smart-stepping Crusaders.
“We missed too many one-on-one tackles and if you do that against these guys then you’re going to be standing behind your poles. So we need to work hard on that,” Human acknowledged.
Even after the Crusaders had scored a couple of tries and shown what a handful they were going to be for a defensive line that was nowhere near proactive enough, the Bulls kept kicking on them and paid the price with seven tries against them.
Pollard admitted afterwards it was a gamble that did not pay off.
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