Bulls invest in their future
July 18, 2012 in Uncategorized
The so called poachers have done it again. The Bulls have signed a total of 26 players from this years Craven Week, including 15 players from outside the union. Five of these players played for Western Province at this year’s tournament.
Read the article here http://www.sport24.co.za/Rugby/Bulls-sign-top-school-stars-20120717.
Interesting to read the comments at the bottom of the above mentioned article. Some user named marnusnoval only had this to say: “Pffft typical”
Typical of what, who where?
Another user said that in a few years’ time we will here nothing of some of these players, which is true.
I remember way back in Standard 8 (Grade 10 for some of you) we started out as a class of nearly sixty hope fulls willing to take on mathematics at Higher Grade level. That number was reduced to just over thirty at the end of the year and we were only twenty who wrote the final exam in Grade 12.
Not all 26 of these players will run out for the Bulls in two years’ time. Not even all of them will be able make a career out of rugby. Next year will see another bunch of hope fulls being recruited by the Bulls as well as every other union, all of them hoping to be Springboks one day. The sad reality is that, in an environment as competitive as ours, only one or two, if any, of these players will one day become a Springbok.
If ten of them make the Bulls’ Super Rugby squad one day it will be a good return of investment. The rest will either move one to smaller unions or will be snatched up by the Sharks, WP or an overseas club and they’ll be able to still make a good living out of rugby. They can even become test players through these avenues as well.
The future looks good for Bulls rugby. It shows that they will be able to benefit from the great Craven Week the union enjoyed and stock up on talent.
Now, we must tend to the small matter of beating the ‘Saders in Christchurch.
Cheers!!!
Bloues
baylion said on July 18, 2012
The Bulls are buying dominance while trying to starve other unions of talent. Less than half their Craven Week team is Bulls-bred and this goes down to 25%-30% for their youth teams.
The fact is the Bulls don’t have their own player pool they can trust or they don’t trust their own development systems so they buy talent and it has become very difficult for any local player to make it at the Bulls.
The unfortunate result is that players that might have developed into useful players elsewhere will now get lost in the Bulls system as the Bulls look to take young talent off the market.
What the Bulls are doing might be good for them but it doesn’t benefit most of the players or SA rugby. Fortunately you still get youngsters like Ryno Eksteen and Jako van der Walt who declined to get involved in the Bulls abatoir.
gertbloues said on July 18, 2012
Like I said to the General, these players are given the opportunity to take part in one of the best youth development programs in the country and will emerge as better players when they turn twenty. The Bulls will obviously have the first pick of the crop, but the other unions will also have a better idea of who to invest in or not.
What the Stormers have invested in Pollard for the past five years will pale in comparison with what the Bulls will invest in him for the next two years. Making promises inviting a player to training clinics doesn’t even come close to having him on your payroll, putting him through training sessions and having him play for one of your youth sides. That is REAL player investment.
baylion said on July 18, 2012
I’m sorry but I don’t agree. The Bulls development programme turn out players who tend to struggle to adapt elsewhere. Most players, especially backs, who don’t make it at the Bulls are turned into journeymen – Jacques-Louis Potgieter, Derick Hougaard, Francois Brummer, Stefan Dippenaar, Burton Francis are prime examples.
gertbloues said on July 18, 2012
I don’t agree on Hougard. In a career that spans for a decade he has played for only three teams. Two of them were tournament winners while was there and the Tigers went to the final.
He may not be an international player, but he is able to make a decent living out of rugby.
Dippenaar is now an international sevens player and can turn out at the Olympics in four years. The other players have reached the same ceiling of their potential that they would have reached at other unions.
baylion said on July 18, 2012
Has Hougaard eventually signed somewhere? Nobody wanted him when he tried to come back to SA earlier this year.
Sevens rugby is a step down, SA or not.
As to van den Heever, he has yet to set the world alight. Took Habana about two years to play decent rugby at the Stormers and that’s mainly because they have now adopted the Bulls game plan.
gertbloues said on July 18, 2012
At the moment Hougard is still struggling with a knee injury the prospects of him ever being able to play again is slim. Hardly a reason to jump at the opportunity of signing him.
Habana was struggling for form even before he joined the Stormers.
And any try scoring wing will struggle if he is appointed as a tackle bag at his new union. Hardly the Bulls’ fault.
Van den Heever also didn’t set the world alight apart from his initial showings at the Bulls so I don’t know why you expect him to set the world alight at another union. He just slotted into the same role he played at the Bulls namely understudy for Habana.
gertbloues said on July 18, 2012
Oh, and Van den Heever looks like he has settled at WP.
zonyja said on July 29, 2012
The Dallas Mavericks are now getting the sarpeteum, superstar, superduper treatment when they were playing the Lakers it was if there was only one team on the court oh wait, there WAS only one TEAM on the court!!! Anyway, my point is now that we have arrived at the Finals ABC/ESPN/Disney will now have you believe Dirk is better than Bird Rick Carlisle is a genius etc., etc. They were completely ignored while dispatching Portland and the Lakers. That has been my issue with coverage of Dallas pre-OKC series. I found it fascinating ABC/ESPN/Disney chose to promote the Finals using footage of not only the Big Three’s disco party last summer but LeBron posting up his Head Coach. Classy.
Hayckal said on August 1, 2012
Peter,I listen to your tbaklack often on Monday morning and am impressed in the detail you provide with your discussion with Telfer. Although not a North Harbour supporter, I felt that Chris Pollock on Sat made one BAD crucial decision with a minute to play that allowed Southland a second bite off a tap penalty.Initially he awarded Sthld a penalty 10 out and wasn’t taken on the mark. Again they tapped and fumbled and knocked on . which should have been ruled a scrum. Pollock for some reason told them to tap again .I thought he rather lost the plot there and Harbour could quite easily have scrummed out the game and cleared for touch.I think the tactics of winding down a clock can be fraught with too much predictability and Harbours tactics with 10 to go were easy to defend . If they continued to attack out wide(where they easily had the better of their opposites) the pressure would have amounted to points. Funny though Pollock (who I think is one of our better refs) couldn’t find fault with Southland on defence when Harbour attacked but in the final throes of the game he caught Harbour often??
GEN DE LA REY said on July 18, 2012
Pollard was still at school and there is only so much developing one can do.
Agree your biggest developing years are post school 2 – 3 years.
But Pollard would have had the same developement at WP as he will have at Bulls.
He might have player S15 next season for the Stormers but will probably play of the bench for the Bulls which might not be a bad thing though.
What Blion is saying is that if you have +40 players and only 22 can play the rest that isn’t first choice might not develope at all cause of lack of game time. They might have developed better at another union cause the might get more game time at that union. Thus the Bulls just buying in bulk will be hurting SA rugby in the long run. But as I said that is the players choice.
Gaukhar said on August 1, 2012
I think Chris Pollock will be on Radio Sport tomorrow mroning re the final try Incident If he had asked the question any reason why I cannot award the try as he believes adamantly,that it was a try,t)hat would have been a resolution.HOWEVER he is now such a skilled and qualified ref,that I amd sure he must have seen the ball grounded against the base of the post Southland definitely escaped a Poorer performance in the circumstances losing more than 10 of their own l/out throws and missing more than 20 tackles hard to believe very UNSOUTHLANDLIKE.
GEN DE LA REY said on July 18, 2012
I must admit the Bulls are buying a lot of young tallent.
They must have huge money reserves to do that. And it will bode well for the Bulls in future.
I also agree with BLion that they are maybe buying more tallent than they can support and maybe messing with a lot of these rugby players futures. (but hey thats up to the young guns to decide)
But this is WP/Stormers weakest point they don’t have a director of rugby and thus nobody to go and scout. The truth is you don’t need to but 26 players you only need to buy two or three but it has to be the right three.
Anyhow still think the signing of Pollard is the at the moment the their biggest signing.
Now the WP has signed the Bulls FH in a tit for tat battle but the Bulls have won that round for now. Pollard seems a bit SBW like and only follows the money so he might be in France or Japan in 2 – 3 years time. (sad)
gertbloues said on July 18, 2012
But how do you know which ones that two or three is? You can tell that a player is talented by his Craven Week form, but how many of the standout players in previous years have really made it at the top?
One thing you must remember is that these players still have a lot of development still to go through and they are not the finished product yet. Nobody knows where the ceilings of their potential are.
What the Bulls are doing isn’t merely keeping these players away from other unions. These players will receive some of the best junior coaching in the country and the Bulls’ High Performance Centre is second only (If not on par) with that of WP. Odds are that all of these players will become better athletes in two years’ time. Then they’ll either stay put at the Bulls or will be available for other unions or overseas based clubs.
Furthermore one should never underestimate the worth of winning the junior championships. The Bulls have consistently performed well in the U19 and U21 tournaments and this laid the foundation for the winning culture in the senior sides. The Stormers have only recently started performing well in these tourneys and are already reaping the rewards.
When was the last time the Bulls bought a player who has already played for the Springboks at another union? The last time this happened was Habana in 2004 and he got his call up after in was confirmed that he’ll be joining the Bulls in 2005.
GEN DE LA REY said on July 18, 2012
Agree 100% that you cannot know for sure. Maybe in Pollards case it’s different. I just said if you could have a scout with the nack of sellecting future tallent he would be worth his wight in gold.
The bulls don’t buy many Boks from other unions but no union buys a lot of boks.
The Bulls though do buy a lot of tallent from other unions at o/21 level and so on. These players was already developed by other unions.
Just think the Bulls have lost a lot of top players and thus have a huge void. Players like Sadie, Engelbrecht, Whitehead left province because they can’t make the first 15.
Who knows maybe in 2 years time the Bulls will have a settled team that does not have a lot of open gaps and then players will opt to leave the Bulls to get game time??
gertbloues said on July 18, 2012
Yep, that is inevitable.
They are just doing their best to make sure that they keep the best talent in Pta.
baylion said on July 18, 2012
Pity that this so-called development programme doesn’t work for the Bulls own youngsters
gertbloues said on July 18, 2012
I don’t really know what you mean by this. But if you are of the opinion that the Bulls contract too few youngsters from the Pretoria region, you may be correct.
But I’m sure the Bulls’ scouts will try and see what is available at home first before they go and scout for talent from other regions. If there were more potential in Pta, like there is this year, then they would have benefited from this. If the Bulls only contracted local player even in the times when the pickings were slim they would have been at home this weekend watching the playoffs like the Lions and Cheetahs instead of actually playing in them.
baylion said on July 18, 2012
The so-called local talent in Pretoria this year is a farce. As I mentioned in my post (Blue Bulls SA’s Rugby Parasites?) only 9 of the BB Craven Week team are from Pretoria, the rest have been imported. Of the 26 players they have contracted so far after Craven Week only 11 are from the BBs and only 5 from Pretoria.
While the Bulls may have a development programme for juniors they don’t seem to have anything in place at school level.
gertbloues said on July 18, 2012
As I also commented on your post. These “imports” decided to go to Pretoria for whatever reason and I’m sure that they had other offers from schools in the Cape and in some cases Grey College as well.
So, they would have been imports whatever the case. They just decided to go to Pretoria. If a schoolboy from Pretoria cant make the cut after these so called imports are in the region, what would the chances of him making a career out of rugby be any way.
What kind of development should the Bulls have at school level? They provide a tournament for the schools to play in and they give rugby clinics from time to time. This is nothing different to what WP are doing in the Cape. Grey Bloem are also doing their scouring and development on their own without any help from the FS Union.
The traditional feeder for the Bulls were the Pretoria Police College and Tukkies. Of these two it’s only Tukkies that still remains strong due to a change in the country’s demographics. Relying solely on talent produced in one city in an environment where you have the Cape with two excellent universities and a host of traditional rugby schools will be suicide.
Like I said, at the moment the Lions are relying almost solely on home grown talent and they are still uncertain about their future.
Two Cents said on July 18, 2012
I have a big problem with these young players being bought by any union. It creates this idea that they dont need to worry about their future outside of rugby…and as you say, very few will make it. isnt it something like 1 in a 1000 will make it from craven week to super rugby level? Could be even less.
We create little monsters that get paid R 200 000 + a year at the age of 19 and broke and bankrupt by the age of 30 with no real future.
GEN DE LA REY said on July 18, 2012
Another point is that esp. this year a lot of the young tallent has been spotted in the last year or so and the real tallent was visited by Mr. Meyer himself. (before he became bok coach)
Now this can’t harm the Bulls plea to young players.
Esp cause HM has showen a clear trend to promote young Bulls players ahead of the rest of the countries young tallent. Esp when it comes to the training groups for the Boks.
Whatever the reason the Bulls should dominate next season’s 0/19 CC.
gertbloues said on July 18, 2012
Remember, HM is yet to promote a Bulls player that he hasn’t personally mentored while he was there.
GEN DE LA REY said on July 18, 2012
Well he has personally mentored all of the current Bulls players at some point.
Whether he will select the new arivals after he left remains to be seen. He has met with a lot of these youngster already though.
gertbloues said on July 18, 2012
I’m just saying that I think he would have selected Potgieter, Englebrecht and Stander even if they declined the offer from the Bulls and went to another Super Rugby union, but still performed good enough.
The reason why approached these players was because he saw their potential as future Boks. That hasn’t changed.
GEN DE LA REY said on July 18, 2012
I disagree, I think Ebertson and De Jong has played way better rugby this season than Engelbreght and are both much more experienced.
Kolisi also played better rugby than Potgieter and is one of the biggest reasons the Stormers are No 1 on the rankings and also one of the reasons the Stormers lost to the Sharks.
So I do think that HM prefer to select players he personally coached above players that have more potensial.
Thats the same reason he only selected Bulls coaching staff.
gertbloues said on July 18, 2012
There wouldn’t have been any point in selecting De Jongh for the Boks if HM didn’t intent to select him for the test side. I think HM only wanted a potential test squad on 26 players and Potgieter, Mvovo, Jantjies and Engelbrecht’s inclusions should be seen as an extension of the development group that Kolisi and Stander were part of.
Potgieter’s inclusion in the test side was forced by Alberts’ injury.
I don’t think that it ever was his intention to play these youngsters in any of the English tests.
GEN DE LA REY said on July 18, 2012
I really miss these discusions.
Pitty Dar, H&P ect are not really active anymore
Sport 24 has really screwed us.
gertbloues said on July 18, 2012
Yep. This is the first time I really had such a discussion on the new platform. I still have a hard time keeping up with what’s going on.