The Bulls will not treat Saturday's meeting with the All Blacks at Loftus Versfeld as a glorified training run. Head coach Johan Ackermann has told reporters in Pretoria that every fit player outside the Springbok camp will be considered for the third match of New Zealand's Rugby's Greatest Rivalry tour.
"We're going to go as strong as we can," Ackermann said. "Barring the Springboks who aren't available and Akker van der Merwe, who is injured, and Sebastian de Klerk, who's injured, all the other names that are available will play."
He named Harold Vorster and Stedman Gans among the regulars who will be involved, while noting that recent arrivals Luan Giliomee, Sango Xamlashe and Dylan Maart remain with their Currie Cup teams.
The complication for the United Rugby Championship runners-up is timing. The Bulls played into June and their players are barely back in the building.
"We would probably only have just returned from the break," Ackermann said. "We have to give the guys a five-week break, but we could only give them three weeks, otherwise you can imagine if we gave them five weeks they would only have started rugby last week. Physically, we just wouldn't be there. Conditioning is one thing, but your body after three weeks, four weeks, loses all of its contact ability."
Ackermann was blunt about what a shortened pre-season costs a coach, and about the players who will miss out because of it.
"It has put a bit of pressure on us, and the challenge is your preseason is the only time you've got to play around with stuff. [...] Now, we are just picking on the squad that we've got left, with the odd guys who are unlucky not to be selected. It is a bit unfair, but that's the hand we've got."
One man who has waited a long time for a night like this is Curwin Bosch. The fly-half signed a three-year deal with the Bulls late last season after two years with Brive in France, and is expected to make his competitive debut for the club against New Zealand.
"It's amazing to be back in South Africa," Bosch said. "The two seasons I spent in France were really good for me, but there's just no place like home. Even Pretoria, which is somewhere I'd never lived before, just feels different. It feels like home."
The 29-year-old, capped twice by the Springboks and not since 2018, said the move to the PRO D2 gave him the reset his career needed.
"The biggest part of it was the mental break. It was so good for me mentally to spend a bit of time in France and just get the shackles off and get back to doing what I do best, and that's play rugby. There were no sideshows and no distractions."
He was direct about his Test ambitions when asked whether they had faded. "One hundred percent," he said. "The day those ambitions go away, I'll stop playing rugby. It doesn't really matter what you say. It's what you produce on the field."
Of Saturday, Bosch added: "The last time the Vodacom Bulls played them was before I was born. It's probably an opportunity of a lifetime to test yourself against the second-best team in the world."
Dave Rennie's side arrive at Loftus with two wins from two, but neither entirely convincing. A patchy 38-21 win over the Stormers was followed by a 54-0 rout of a depleted Sharks in Durban on Tuesday, a night that began badly.
"We were probably frustrated with the first 40," Rennie said. "We gave away a lot of penalties early, struggled to get our hands on the ball. When we did, we looked good but we didn't build enough pressure for long enough."
With the first Test against the Springboks at Ellis Park on 22 August, the All Blacks coach knows the pattern has to change. "We can't afford to start games like we have the two games here so that will be a focus for us but a really positive last 40."
Former All Black Israel Dagg saw something else in Durban worth South African attention. Speaking with Scotty Stevenson on Sport Nation's Scotty and Izzy show, Dagg argued New Zealand have altered how they kick.
"Usually in the past you could predict when the kick's going to happen. The ball is slow, you get to the base of the ruck, they start getting players ready to chase and they kick," Dagg said. "The way that they went about it is they were shifting the ball to space, they were getting it to the second, to the third man and that's when they were putting the grubber back down and you're isolating that single defender at the back."
Stevenson suspects the wet-weather plan was partly a smokescreen. "Ultimately, I think if you're the South African analysts at the moment looking at that game, you're thinking to yourself, 'is this your tactic for the Test?' It was different to the tactics we saw against the Stormers, very different."
Loftus is the last live rehearsal before Johannesburg. Rennie is expected to name something close to his preferred XV. Ackermann, three weeks into a pre-season, will send out what he has.
