Four URC finals. Four losses. What being on the Bulls' bench showed Harry Jones | Lekker Rugby Pod

And it was I think about 15 minutes in and I said They should just change everything right now Like I know where this is going And we're getting From the very beginning sitting on the bench with those players They were stunned, they were stunned into silence It wasn't even clear what to exhort or encourage Because nothing was working at source on first phase And so it was just catch up, catch up, catch up catch up, catch up. And you look at the score and suddenly it's 22. And you know, in a final, that's pretty much church. That's probably it. Apparently, Murray Kinsler told me that the Bulls were super tight a year ago, that he could almost look at them and say, wow, you are wound up too tight.

He said, I am really worried tonight, before the match. I'm really worried because the Bulls look really calm. They've got such operators. It was Jamison in Gibson Park who seemed to see the field. I don't know, this man, he seemed to see where everything was.

It's almost like, Jamison Gibson Park was like playing like he was in the parachute above. Having a drone above him. And he knew where the space was. There was a drone in his head. This is the Lecker Rugby Pod, only on Megaphone Rugby.

Welcome back to the Lecker Rugby Pod. It's a classic, another one just me and Harry. And we've been waiting with this a bit. That's our UOC final review. And there's a reason why we delayed it a little bit, obviously, because RAC is now hogging the headlines again.

The Springboks are back in the news. But now let's do it proper. People call it an autopsy, A-W-topsy, like, oh, you know, a very sympathetic bulls autopsy. It's not going to be that. It's going to be a proper in-depth one.

Welcome back, Harry. How's it, man? Which stage of the grief process are you in now? No, I told you it's going to be anger for a year, although I must be honest, it's sort of simmering at the moment. I went back to Loftus this morning to do something, bumped into Camera Undercom, so my mood suddenly lifted.

You know, maybe I just needed a bit more bulls therapy, you know, in person. That works well. Yeah, people were saying, you know, I think I was the only Saffa Pundit opinion influencer man at Kirk Park. It was all Irish journalism. It was pretty much just a Leinster crowd, a home fixture, a great neighborhood.

and the people ask me a lot of people in the crowd recognized uh and they like our work i'm from leinster so a lot of our dubliners and one guy on the way out said what what stuck with you you know what person i think was he said was and i said cameron hanecombe i actually thought cameron hanecombe stood out to me in the days following when i thought about it and i think there's this type of athlete that always rises to the top in the end. They go through all kinds of obstacles and hurdles. Sometimes they've got to figure out who they are. Sometimes they have to come out from the shadow of whatever high school or family they were in and make their own identity. But in a loss, you can learn a lot about a person when things don't go their way.

And the picture of Cam I have is sort of refusing to lose. I mean, lose they were going to, But he didn't eat it. He didn't swallow it. He didn't like it. He spat it out.

He kept to himself. He was fuming. There were storm clouds and thunder and lightning coming out of his ears. Everything he did on the pitch was miles ahead of his compatriots, his colleagues, who had a very, very, very bad day for the most part. Cameron didn't have a bad day.

Got over the ball despite incredible cleaning. but just a picture of him at the end sitting on the field by himself in the shadow of the posts, all the music going on, the celebration, the fire, the girlfriends, the wives, the mothers hugging the players. He just stared. He was looking at all of it. Like he wanted to see Josh Van der Fleer hug his family and be Josh Van der Fleer down the road and beat him and be better than him.

And didn't want to come onto the bench and sit with everyone else talking about what has happened and bitching about the ref and talking about the weather and why didn't we do this and you know monday morning quarterbacking retrospective you know perfect glasses uh he just wanted to fume he was like you he just wanted to be mad and then and then sort of join the others but not really but he was i thought what he wasn't doing he wasn't hanging out with archis name on you know having a chuckle and a giggle and talking about the kids and the holidays uh he wanted to go back into the weight room that's what cameron Hanecun wanted to do. He wanted to run laps. Yeah, well, the sharp eyed amongst you, or the sharp eard, I suppose, would have asked me, why was Cameron at Loftus? Isn't there a test next weekend? And yes, there is.

They were let go yesterday, and it's going to be, and that's on Thursday, and they'll be back in camp on Sunday, but Cameron decided it's a good thing to do some extra work, and that's the hallmark of a great player, I would think. You look at some of the top players, and now I'm thinking of Tiger Woods, for example. You know, there was a player, John Daly, that had more natural talent i once saw john daly hitting balls on a range before a pro event one-handed smoking with the other hand had a couple of m m's that he was chaffing as over here and and a diet coke sitting on the table and hitting one-handed uh lob wedges um clean off of a tight lie with a divot perfect rectangles one after the other and nailing it to 125 125 125 125 21 20 wasn't even wasn't even looking and then tiger woods same event swing coach thought coach back coach bicep coach angles photos breathing visual what's my swing thought um and doing it for hours before anyone came and hours after you know i got like fred couples of rock up do two parts and go oh let's go i don't mess up my back so i'm not i'm not downing fred couples and john daly that might have more interesting lives that might have had more happiness but to be a real great in a sport um you got to be a gym rat as michael jordan said you got to have 500 more shots how many people have seen mornay stain doing those kicks post-match that's what he's famous for you know in a match where he made the kick. He doesn't trust it. Johnny Wilkinson would try to get so good that he could aim at a guy in row five in a red shirt and nail it.

So he wasn't just aiming to get over the poles. He was aiming for a guy in the stands. Cameron Hanukom has got that kind of attention to detail. I could see how he was scanning the Irish players post celebration. He wasn't looking at his guys.

He wasn't actually moping around. He didn't want to talk to Johan I didn't want to talk to Ruan Hortier. He wants to be by himself. And I think it's because he wanted to look at everything and have his own thoughts and his own bitterness and his own rage and his own like, I don't want to be on the losing side again and again and again. I don't want to be that guy.

So, you know, I was kind of, I don't know, I was heartened by that. It was a very interesting night. It was such a privilege to be there, you know, to be, you know, just the interloper, the outlander. That's actually the perfect segue into my next question. I just want to get back to Cameron quickly.

People, watch that video of ours with John Cardinale, where we spoke about the evolution of the bomb squad. And you guys, you know, we talked a lot about Paul Deveille as an element. And somebody in the comments mentioned that Cameron Hanukom is actually the perfect bomb squadder, playing in any position that you want him to. He may be not as physical as Jasper Bissett or whatever. And you and I will be paying a bit more attention to that going forward.

But, yeah, the big question of the weekend wasn't, you know, what happened or everything else. It's, well, how the hell did a Stormers supporter end up embedded with the Bulls? Talk to me about that. Yeah, so I was going to be in London anyway for a speech that I was giving about cross-border investigation. situations and handling scandals when you have more than one jurisdiction at play.

So, you know, the embezzling CFO from Bangalore that ends up going to Australia and the whistleblower is in Hong Kong and the board is sitting in San Francisco. What do I do? You know, how do I do that? So I was doing that and it occurred to me suddenly the flight to Dublin is just an hour. and so I brought it up with you and we ended up visiting with Edgar our friendly CEO of the Bulls and a good friend of yours and one thing led to another and Clinton Vandenberg and the team, the media team there, it was so kind to kind of push my accreditation request over the line quickly and so a last minute idea turned into a really cool idea and And so much like when Stormers invited me to be embedded, there's a bit of that kind of I'm going someplace, but I don't know if it's really going to work.

Because, you know, to give you an idea of what it's like behind the scenes, even in a final that is sort of a modest final, and let's be honest, the ERC doesn't really put on this massive show. There was no flyovers. It's kind of a neighborhood match in some ways. But still there's a lot of bodies and things and corridors and hallways and doors you don't know how to open when you're not really a journalist and catchphrases and guys that you've got to know, Liam and Sean. And it's all very insider.

It's the ultimate insider because they have their own buffet. They have their own drinks. They get to go to the match free, which is a thing. A lot of journalists never pay for matches. And so that's just not what I'm used to.

I'm always used to paying my own way, going in the proper door and with all the other fans and hanging out. and so I had to go and get my badge before and get cleared and even then when you know where you're going Clinton and I had to go in together but then we kind of diverged because he could go the special way and I had to go all the way to the end and come around and you just kind of wind your way through a succession of people who their job is to sort of say no you're not supposed to be here that's really their job, it's a lot of people in bibs telling other people in bibs not to be there and there's layers to the shit. There's rungs of hierarchy. You know, it's the grand old man. I ran into a guy named Michael Corcoran who listens to our pod, watches our pod from Dublin.

It's a good man, Michael. Good to see you. So it's interesting just bumping into people who liked our pod who were from Dublin. But I just kind of, you know, wound my way and then hooked back up with Clinton. And sure enough, we were right there on the pitch.

I mean, hanging out with the mascots, hanging out with your hated DJ, hanging out with the drummers and the photographers, talking to skulk brits, having a little, you know, a little chat with Brian O'Driscoll. So sorry, I didn't remember his name. That's really embarrassing. Bod in Bod We Trust, the most famous guy there. He's literally walking around like he's a god, And he's alternately rude and pleasant.

And you never know which one he's going to get. So I got the pleasant one, which was cool. I think he's probably the most pleasant to people he doesn't know. And, you know, just that whole scene was cool. And then I didn't know what was going to happen next.

And let me tell you something, Envia. Clinton didn't either. We were just kind of going with the flow because the final seconds, people tell you where you're going to go and you just go. So I walked down the AstroTurf. Stay on the Astro.

Don't go on the real grass. That's the whole rule. and hung out, saw all those things, got great pictures, great vibes, great chats. And then suddenly, all of a sudden, when the team had run out and almost ran into the kids that are coming off, that are holding the hands of some of the other players, and we just had to go right into the bench area where the players that are on the bench sit, but also squad players that are not on the game day squad and some back staff people for the Bulls. And that's where we sat.

So, you know, right behind Jan Hendrik Vessels, right next to Zach Berger. I mean, literally we were next to each other. You were on the bench. All the comms. Yeah, I could hear all the comms.

It was really interesting. You could hear all the comms. And that's another issue that we'll talk about just now. So you were at the match. You know, we were all hyped up.

You were going to have a beer and relax. And it just went horribly wrong. So you're just, you know, bird's eye view impressions. What happened? We'll go into the details just now, you know, senior players and the likes, but just your off-the-cuff remarks, what you thought happened there.

You know, it's very strange. Sometimes you get a foreboding, I think the word is. You go into a match and you just have a feeling that it might not go your way. You have a feeling that the stars might not be aligning. It was exactly the opposite.

Everyone was in a good mood at the little staging hotel that they went to right before, which was just one block away from Croke Park. Croke Park is, by the way, is set in a lovely neighborhood. It's very quiet. Just, you know, single family homes with good gardens. It looks affluent, but not ridiculously affluent.

But the whole thing is quiet. And it's a GAA, Gaelic Athletic Association, the hurling and Gaelic soccer. It's that type of stadium. That's what it's known for. It's not known for rugby.

and the whole vibe is just pleasant. And the Bulls fit the vibe. They were very relaxed in the hotel, onto the bus, on the way over. Irish journalists that had been there watching practices told me that the Bulls were super chill. There was none of that tightness that they had a year ago.

So when we're doing this a year ago thing, what happened, the benchmark, Apparently, Murray Kinsler told me that the Bulls were super tight a year ago, that he could almost look at them and say, wow, you are wound up too tight. Your emotional energy is going to peak on a Tuesday or a Wednesday instead of on the game night. He said, I am really worried tonight. This was before the match. I'm really worried because the Bulls look really calm.

They've got such operators. Vili La Rue, 100 caps Andre Pollard, 85 caps 1-8 lost 1 of knockouts in the World Cup and the one he lost was Dan Cardi when he was 23 years old, Andre seasoned operators Papir having a career best season Elrich back Cameron back, big carriers back, 2 packs an indomitable scrum Murray said this is going to be a proper match Look what the Stormers did to us. And we think the Bulls are a bit better, you know, so they could do exactly what the Stormers do. There the template There it is You just watch do that and then go a little bit farther into the match but don get carded i guess was the caveat no one said because because at 11 13 the stormers had shown the template but then you can't you cannot get carded as double said you've got to play 15 men so i think when you're playing a 900 test cap team and you get carded so early and you cannot win a line out, things start to get in your head. And maybe it doesn't matter that you have 100 caps and 85 caps and you're a World Cup winner.

Maybe at that point, any player gets rattled because it doesn't do any good to win a scrum penalty if you cannot win the line out. In some ways, it demoralizes you as you're marching to the line out because you go, I'm going to throw to Max Deegan. There's Max Deegan. I wonder if I'll throw to Max Deegan. Oh, yeah, I threw to Max Deegan.

Why? Why could we not stop something? Why did we not just fire the ball into the fucking prop at the front of the line out? I mean, you have at least as good a chance of getting it there as trying to lift someone. And, you know, Max Deegan has somehow been taught Afrikaans by Arki Sleeman or something was happening where Max knew where the ball was always going all the time.

And so one of the most important platforms for the Bulls attack, one of the keys to being such a high-scoring team, has been good, clean, top, back, line-out ball that shoots and results in an accelerating pattern around the corner, big carriers, get some space, find Cameron in some space, have a little break here, have a little break there, get Kane and Moody, the try that he did score. but instead it was the stuttering and the speed of attack by Leinster it seemed startling to the Bulls even from the beginning even the ones that didn't work I thought oh geez they got to the edge way too quickly and every pass was on target and accelerated so from the very beginning sitting on the bench with those players they were stunned they were stunned into silence and i couldn't believe how quiet it was and you know we could all hear each other talk anything like if jan hendrick said something or i said something or clearly said something we all heard it so you know it was kind of like what's happening i didn't know what to say didn't know where to look it wasn't it wasn't even clear what to exhort or encourage because nothing was working at source on first phase and so it was just catch up catch catch-up and you look at the score and suddenly it's 22 and you know and in the final that's pretty much church that's probably it you know i mean you can pull the glasgow miracle one time but i don't know if you can do it against lindsner in craig park the one thing that you said to me in our reaction immediately afterwards you were standing on the pitch and i was quite proud of that that's one of those mega phone rugby highlights you know you were at the final on the pitch in dublin no hall as a guest of the of the bulls but the one thing that you said to me immediately that struck was there was no communication. Joplin Nabo was doing the runs up and down, coming down to the bench saying this, this and that and the other, exhorting them, pushing their chests and hyping them up. Crickets from the Bulls coaching team. Nothing.

Nothing about we need to do this and we need to do that. I was in the Bulls and one of the things that they tried to address was the 20 minute lapse. Remember those last 20 minutes the Bulls went to sleep and actually just hang on for dear life. And they actually made a point of talking about it. What's the reason and what's going on?

and maybe I'm talking out of turn here but I mean it's it's common knowledge that that is a problem and the fact that they were willing to address it and one of the things that came out there was the bench needs to know what's going on and what they need to adjust to how they need to you know what's going to be different what can they do to make this work where this doesn't work what do we do then and nothing seemed to have happened because that to me was the big thing you know the coaches sat there you talked about the bench looking stunt I mean we're very good friends of coaches but they look pretty much stunned as well i mean literally looking like deer in the headlights yeah okay so i want to be very careful almost surgical about how i put this because i don't think the bulls are the exception here i think leinster is the exception but when you're playing the best the best in the urk is leinster they are the gold standard they should probably win every year to be honest with the advantages they have um it's really cool to be there and learn from them i mean like instead of saying who did this to us when we lose or what happened to us it's more like you know we lost and and how can we be how can we copy the best how can we copy the gold standard what is the best practice um and so you're right you look right there and i was sitting inside the bench zach over here jan andre confronted me and behind me uh stephen hans and then i looked to my left and it wasn't very far and i could see the leinster bench and part of why I was looking over there was because Kalen Doris was injured and I wanted to see what it looked like for him on the bench post so six minutes in he walks up he limps up and he sits down the man went to work he went to work I mean even in the six minutes he was on a smart player like him had seen things that were not the same as what they thought they would be they were winning but they still wanted to win and you know bury So I think Jacques Nidalbert has given them that sort of killer, ruthless instinct as well. So he's sitting there and he's conveying information and they huddle. They're literally in a huddle. Then a man comes down from the coaching box. I don't know who he is, but he's a Leinster man.

And he's starting to share pictures at 10 minutes, printouts. Someone has an iPad. Someone is showing diagrams. I couldn't see it. I'll try to see it.

I couldn't see it. then I see Nina but himself coming up and down sometimes he goes to the field he's not really on camera because he hides but he sits on he gets on his knee and he's watching play from this angle then he comes up to the player box and he says hey Gary Ringrose blah blah blah blah then he talks to you know um the reserve hooker and he's talking about line outs I'm sure shit I know what he's I can almost feel what he's doing then he runs up burning calories to the box then right before off time at maybe 32 minutes he's back again and he's giving more information he's not waiting until oranges because here's i think what's happening with the bulls is they're preparing a proper analysis you know organized coherent let's not jump maybe at 15 minutes we're reacting too much to something. But I don't think that's how the game is played anymore. Quick strike, momentum, high scoring. I think you have to nip things in the bud before they get out of hand because you can lose a match in 10 minutes.

And so, and I think, you know, I was talking to Dobbo about this and he was talking about how some coaches can really see real time. This reminds me of Sir Nick Faldo saying a really good amateur golfer can hit the ball as far as us, can hit great shots. What differs is that we can fix our game. I can fix my swing in the middle of the swing. I have good input into my brain and go, my elbow's trailing and I'm too quick through my hips.

And I think there's things in rugby like that. There was a way to rescue the line out. And perhaps some of the ideas could have come from the players on the bench who are also great line out exponents. And from that bench, they could see it. Or you could have someone relaying information for someone like Zach, who may have come on at any point in time and say, what we're going to do is this.

Do you see that? Can you see that with me? Sit with him and say, let's watch this next five minutes. What is Jemisin Gibson Park doing? Let's find a way to muck it up.

I felt like that's what Leinster was doing up 22-0. They were doing that up 14. And it wasn't just Caelan Dars, Scary Ring Rose, Nina Aber and this unknown person that was doing it. Everyone was leaning in and getting information. In contrast, and I'm not singling out the Bulls.

I think a lot of teams are like this. The forwards were in the front. They were watching. Wilco Lowe was watching the scrums. But man, I would have loved to have had scrum coach sitting with him and saying, the way we can turn the tide for Andrea Piardi is to give him this picture.

Let's watch these scrums together and let's learn together real time. And I don't know about you, but I think Vilko probably had some good ideas. So let's share, you know, let's get together. That way, when the relay came, it wasn't just Stinecom saying one phrase to a guy going on. It would be more a conversation that built in chakas.

First 10 minutes, second 10 minutes, third 10 minutes. Then you're building, you know, what Dalla was saying is you got to fix the plane while you're flying. You know, it's very difficult. But the gold standard is teams like Leinster who do it, shooting information by iPad, having printout diagrams, huddling with players, getting Gary Ringrose to talk about the Blitz to the, to Nienabert, Nienabert back, and then someone else is listening who's about to go on. And it turned out that, you know, that was one of the reasons.

One of the reasons was that Leinster seemed more prepared, more able to handle the moment. But the part that will vex us always who wanted the Bulls to win was why wasn't that true of Andre Pollard, Willi LaRue and, you know, Ruan Nortia and, I mean, guys that have been in Buckland and, you know, getting the very best coaching in the world, the best coaches in the world coaching them, why doesn't that sort of trickle down through them into club performance? I don't know. Well, that's a good point. what set the bulls apart from Leinster on the day, apart from anything else.

I mean, there's Springbok laid inside versus an island laid inside, everything else. And the thing that jumps to mind for me, and I think it's being refuted, I suppose, or, you know, it's being made of a poopod almost, if that's the right word. But coming back to South Africa, that traveling, that's 24 hours you spent on a plane that Leinster didn't. Yes, you spent time with your family. Yes, you spent time with your children.

and yes, you did a bit of a run on a Friday at Loftus, went home and had a bribe with your friends. Surely it must have had an impact. Somehow, somewhere. Coming to South Africa, it's nice and warm over here, even though it's winter, nice and sunny, it's at altitude. Then going back to Leinster at sea level, like you said to me before, suddenly it's colder.

Maybe it wasn't that cold. I mean, it was raining still and everything else. But the point is, it's a different atmosphere. It's a different country, big expectations. was it the right thing to stay over there and number one that's the first thing the second thing is Glasgow did the same thing two years ago but then there was only a week between the semi-final and the final so that makes a big difference you don't have to spend a week or two weeks in Ireland or South Africa why suddenly is there now two weeks between the semi-final and the final I'm not sure what the exact administrative reason for it was talk to me about that side of it how much influence that out do you think yeah and Glasgow is like 40 miles away from Ireland across the sea.

You know, you dehydrate when you fly. I got sick yesterday, probably just from the jumping around. It wasn't cold in Dublin, but it was wet. And it was that kind of wet that gets all the way into your bones. People have no idea.

TV never conveys it, how slippery everything was because it was the worst. It was like very windy, sunny, rainy, sunny, rainy, sunny rainy windy play you know and in the middle of the match it would it kept going back to drizzle so that everything was just sloppy um so yeah maybe if you live amongst that and you just kind of get into that and you just kind of be that for two for two weeks it's better you know you just get you know just get your get your sniffles maybe you're sick one day and then you're better the next day not real sick you know just uh you know sinuses and so yeah maybe retrospect but look at the Lions they kind of did that and they got hosed so didn't work yeah the Bulls hit the same last year it wasn't two weeks but they stayed behind last year so what went wrong this is the question you're asking is what went wrong so it's you know it's kind of an autopsy and I think it was a deficit of the mentality and I and even the thing I just that sort of story anecdote I gave you about the different benches it speaks of that was preparation someone said that they're going to do that It wasn't just spur of the moment that Jacques Ninova was running around. That's what he does. But on finals, he does it more. Just like you saw him with each successive round in the World Cup.

By the end, they were just, I mean, his head was blowing up by the end. The guy could have, he could have, you know, powered a whole village with his internal nervous system. I don't know. Have you ever jumped out of a plane with a parachute? No, thank goodness, no.

If someone had temptation to do it, I declined. So thank goodness, no. I had to do a lot of that in different parts of my life. We won't get into all that. But I was so surprised when I jumped out of a plane.

So I have no fear of heights, but I have a fear of falling. Everyone does. I didn't feel like I was falling. And I felt immense peace. And I felt like I had incredible perspective from a high altitude of the town and the village and the place where I was supposed to land.

Even though it looked like a long way away, it wasn't rushing towards me. I felt like I had a lot of time because I was removed. Marcus Aurelius talks about if you have a problem in your life, get way up top, almost fly up 10,000 feet, and then look down on your problem and see if it is as big as you think. And I think what went wrong was the Bulls didn't prepare for the match that was going to be played that night. they prepared for a mythical imaginary thing where it was like we're going to do these scrums and these line outs, we have these rucks on the fourth ruck I want you to get the inside shoulder but then as the game went it was a blitz the thing just went crazy and all of a sudden they're under the sticks whoa, what happened?

Oh get a card, whoa and there wasn't sort of this one person on the pitch in my opinion, this is just opinion that was able to be up high like Ninaber or maybe Kalen Doris even on the bench was able to do or maybe it was Jamison Gibson Park who seemed to see the field. I don't know this man he seemed to see where everything was it's almost like Jamison Gibson Park was like playing like he was in the parachute above looking down and he knew where the space was there was a drone in his head I don't know. I'm not accusing Leinster of cheating and having a drone Don get crazy but it was like he had one he was tapped in And I remember thinking when I was in that parachute I was thinking okay at some point I going to get close to land And then I will realize that I'm falling. Because then when you're about 200 meters up, then you go, oh, wow, this is happening. I felt like the bulls were always in that mode.

I'm going to slide on my bum, hopefully into the bush just right, not snag anything, get my parachute ready and done and put in the backpack. I felt like Leinster was up in the sky, blissful, happy, smiling. And I start to think that's mind-body connection. That's psychological coach. That's, you know, I was just making fun of Tiger Woods having all that.

But I think it does matter. Look at Tiger Woods trophies. So, you know, look at John Daly, how he spun out of control. So there is something about managing that Leinster has. I wouldn't say perfected look what happened to them in Bordeaux but on their day they can get it really really right where everything's in sync and people know what they're doing and in real time it felt like they were ready for this match the match that was being played now here at Croke Park in this wet weather with this particular crowd on this day with this wind everything just that's they were i felt like um the bulls were wishing and wishing and wistful and what could have been what might have been and this isn't right and what's wrong here and what kind of what's going on with the scrums it was all just kind of um yeah it was it was uh it was circular thinking whereas uh leinster was a spear up the gut it was just everything on high speed everyone was ready to run rico joani looked like old rico joani made me into a fool people in the in the crowd were just jeering at me talking about rico joani saying is he big now harry how big is uh kate one guy gave me some real guff an old man actually he's a very big fan of the pod and he's like how big is canaan moody now and i was like oh you know that's not very i called the wrong match up there man.

My pants pulled down. I got it hiding. Kane and Moody must have had his worst match and Rico Ioanni must have had his best match in ages. We'll talk about the names, the big names. The Kane and Moody's, Valle LaRouche, the big big names getting two yellow cards for the same thing which is what I want to talk to you about next.

System failures. There's somebody in our comments who is also pretty connected to the Bulls saying to me, I should ask whether the Bulls changed the game plan on the Sunday before they left. Now, I don't know anything about that. I haven't heard that before, and I heard it from this one, but I know it's from a sort of semi-reliable source, I would think. Any idea?

Did you pick up any of that, that they played differently than they used to play suddenly in the final? I didn't see that. Well, it was weird because they couldn't really get their attack going until very late in the first half. So it's hard to... And then when you're chasing, it always looks like you're playing different.

But in some ways, the Bulls always play like they're chasing. They're always trying to score a lot of points and they don't mind the risk-reward. And the tries that Leinster got weren't really, except that first one, the fumble, the bad, you know, just bad handling, probably a bad idea actually to throw the ball around that quickly, in the wet, that quick. A kick behind, a diagonal kick into Coffin Corner was what was on there, you know, for the Bulls. Just make them play out.

Kill time. Get to 10 minutes with the score 0-0, 3-0. Like, just calm everyone down. But after that, when the score gets out of hand, then the Bulls have to attack whatever they... So I think that was fun.

Defensively, I got to say, yeah, I think there was. And I think that might have just been a simple... Maybe we're overcomplicating it. The number 13 is the key. Kane and Moody had an absolute world elite stinker.

you know just just unbelievably bad pong game and then he gets carded so that you're taking out the key cog in your sort of semi drift system which i don't like it looks like the wallabies um there's not enough bite and you know so i think maybe it just made uh rika joani and james low and Hugo Keenan looked like, you know, they were having a training run. And then once that was sort of ingrained, then I think panic sets in. And I haven't seen the Bulls panicky. Bulls have been very, like, tough-minded and that comeback against Glasgow and the way the season was trajectory was going up. So that was kind of jarring to see them revert back to early season 2025 version of Bulls, early 26 where there was some panic and people were shooting when they shouldn't be shooting they didn't it didn't feel like there was synergy between uh uh forster and moody i felt like uh valley was disconnected then he gets carded so you're right now so now you're having the organizer and the key cog back-to-back cards um and also ap this guy ap um on x does some you know thoughtful posts he does some crazy posts but it's on and the fourth one he said was moody's actions and billy's so the really does this a lot but moody's actions uh on going for the ball but not really going but maybe be going it speaks of someone that's in between but twixting between systems where he's not clear between buckland and bulls land the the game plan still a young guy you know it's nerve-wracking you're in a final you're right there in the hot lights you're up against reiko yoani uh you know everyone's watching he just seemed to go but then not go he was tentative you know and if he had really gone flat out when i looked back he would have got the ball he would have he might have just taken it and runs and the whole game is different now it's 7-0 um so there was something going on again we're back to mind we're going back to you know coaching the mind in the hot lights in when it's all on when it's high performance how do you make decisions clearly and quickly instinctively we spoke to andre peturius uh the other day paul and i and he's just been promoted to the head coach of his team in a red offense in japan which i wasn't allowed to talk about but now i am so well done andre so one of our own we've got some god sons the god sons you call them and family members like yellow that's why people get so upset now because i keep talking about ellie but thank you for commenting people mission accomplished but anyway andre said when he started coaching it was um 20 mental and 80 strategy or tactics something know about that.

He says nowadays it's 60% mental, 40% tactical and whatever else comes with it. Maybe that's where the Bulls fall a bit short. And not just the Bulls, teams in general fall a bit short there. There's not much, not enough attention is being paid to the softer stuff. Johan Akerman is well known and renowned for actually being very much in touch with his people, his players' feelings and managing that.

Very good at it. A people's person, let's call it that. But there's more to it than that. More than you know, the occasional psychologist coming in, popping in, how's it, how's your mother, well done guys, you know, and that doesn't work anymore, that's not psychological, you know, that's almost as an important segment of the game as anything else, but you need someone more dedicated to it and I suppose next level almost. I'd say to you, why don't we get somebody from the NBA or NFL or NHL or whatever it might be to come in here and get a proper, you know, head thing going on at the Bulls and the Stormers and any other team?

Because for other mentals, you're basically nowhere, no matter how good you are. Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, you look at an undermanned Stormers side that was lacking Kobus, Sasha, really down on locks. But they kind of pulled off, you know, the game plan that you had to play, that any team had to play against Leinster. And that was all down to mind. That was all like, there was a concerted effort.

And then it was lost, you know, and one try resulted, and that's all it took because of a mind fart, brain fart. Okay, so that shows you that if you switch that one brain fart off, Ruan Ackerman doesn't clean that way, Ramos are in a descendancy, and it's 11-13 with 20 to play. Who knows what happens? So that's an example of how a severely undermanned side of less than 100 caps was battling pretty well against 900 caps. When the Bulls came in with what they thought was the perfect mindset, which was chill, like let's not be like a year ago.

Okay, so I get that. That sounds right to me. But then you still have to have within the team these decision nodes, these game drivers, these guys that take the game and they say, I will put this game on my back. you will hear a lot about me. And you made this apt observation which we weren't even hearing Pollard's name.

And it was bizarre because, you know, the great players always show up in the big games. That's, you know, no matter what they do, they will find a way to get their way into the match. Jemison Gibson Park showed you. This is what it looks like. You know, I got Sam Pernagos.

He's not the greatest. He hasn't got the most confidence right now. You know, everyone thinks he's the weak link. So it's up to me to do something about it. And he did something about it.

And it was cool. It was great. It was good looking. You looked at it and said, wow, look at that. That's a guy who knows where he wants to be.

And he's putting other people into space. And I just think there wasn't anyone like that. Cameron Honeycomb probably came as close to it. But an eight is not going to be able to take the whole team and put them in the right place. You know, it's much more than nine, 10, 15.

So that's the big takeaway is I think there's two parts is getting people ready to play, whether it's the travel, the mind, the electrolytes, the game planning, and then the comms inside the match was called that high performance prep. And that prep just goes on during the match too. It doesn't stop. I'd want coaches detouring to the box. I saw Ackerman walk right by the bench up to the box and not interact with him.

I mean, I'm not dissing him. I'm saying that's fine. He's probably intent. But some amount of game planning around that, having maybe a coach that actually sits there all the time with him and is connected auditorily, and then keep feeding information about where we want to be and what you want. Because you never know when someone gets injured, it's quick.

Someone's running on, so you don't get to wait until the planned bomb squad sometimes. But just having people sitting there in their own thoughts, Kubis-Visa just sitting, literally watching Kubis-Visa sit there and not one person talk to him for 40 minutes while the score got out of hand. That cannot be right. There has to be something. So, you know, who does it fall to?

Well, it's just Zach talking to Kubis then. Is Kubis even listening to him? I don't know. You know, I wouldn't listen to a nine. I'm just kidding.

but you know like you know what are his thoughts about what should be different from what the game plan was coming in you know mike tyson get punched in the nose where's your plan so now we got punched in the nose what's now what now yeah there's got to be something else and if you just wait for oranges that's a hectic thing in the in the change room it's a very hectic thing you're going to take off your shirt your heart you're mad you're irritated you want to eat a banana you're talking you know you're taking whatever you're doing something and then you have to listen but you're being talked to in a communal fashion not a one-on-one need aber one on one i saw him go one-on-one with every single player punching their chest getting into there another guy hugging him hey it's okay he changes he's a chameleon he changes personality with each player he doesn't just do a okay guys so we didn't do very well in the line out but we're fix that you know whatever i mean you might have to talk to a guy who's lost confidence or maybe you're the hooker who's going to come in you know and you're watching grobala struggle you know you might need to talk to someone about where we're going to go different we spoke to statement hansen expand just how that works actually after the glasgow game the the oranges i mean you get a minute and a half to yourself and then a minute or something that the at the the forwards and the backs split up and they get spoken to individually and then the coach has one minute to speak to everybody so now you want to contain 40 minutes worth of uh you know you had a plan and a plan is what you have until you get punched in the nose it's exactly what happened how do you convey that in a minute it's impossible you need to do it live on the fly all the time you you study formula one all the time right i mean what kind of comms is going on there yeah non-stop it's non-stop i mean as i talk to the drivers all the time the drivers talk to them as well a big problem in formula one and i suppose this is very apt here as well the drivers don't always see the bigger picture the strategic picture why can't i come in for new tires right now no because you have to do this and that and the other they don't see the big picture they just feel what the car is doing at that very moment and what's happening on the record field at that very moment where the coaches would would have a bigger, you know, like you just mentioned, bird's eye view of it. I think that's a big problem, that communication is an issue. But I want to get back to the mental thing, and this is now the bigger mental thing. Four finals out of five, getting there. Qualifying, getting to the finals.

I mean, no other team has done it in the URC. No other team. And yet they cannot get it over the line. And to me, it cannot be the quality of the players. It cannot be anything other than what's going on in their heads.

And a big match temperament is an overly used term, I suppose, but it's very applicable here. They need to get someone in that team to say, to get them over the line mentally and the rest will follow. Yeah, it's interesting because on a scientific, on an empirical basis, we can remove a lot of variables here. You know, are the players good enough? Absolutely.

You know, could you upgrade here or there? Fine. But I mean, the Bulls team has enough players in it to win. second is head-to-heads against Glasgow and Leinster are actually in Bull's favor it's just at the biggest moment it's not so this again speaks to mental versus capabilities finally I would say we can remove as a variable any sort of referee decisions or yeah the justice system I think there's been plenty you know when you have that much sample you go, okay, it's something else. And there that old adage of like when you lose a war or life goes against you as a culture or a nation you mustn say who did this to us so much I mean you can do it a little bit but you must get onto the next step which is how can I do better You know what can I what thing can I change And Clinton and Van den Berg and I sitting on the bench there we like sit, I just kind of mumbled to him and we kept it low not to bother the players.

And it was, I think about 15 minutes in. And I said, they should just change everything right now. Like I know where this is going. And we're getting fucked. So do anything you want to do, but don't do what you've been doing.

Like you're going to lose anyway, right? Don't be a donkey. Yes, just come on. I was literally thinking, stick Stedman on right now. If Kanan's having a stinker, why are we pretending he's not having it?

Why are we pretending this wonderful, incredible player who I love so much puts on a green and gold jersey, guys like Dynamite, but he's not here tonight? and even if you say oh but he scored a try later i don't know step one score the same try maybe another try so do something that's different um bother riko joani better maybe just have a little more side to side speed maybe have someone who's not you know thinking about the wrong thing in his head right now i don't know what's going on but something's going on where it wasn't working for okay then then do what rossi and felix and jacques did which is yank someone like duane from you and ibn etzebeth andre pollard uh see you khalisi early in a match it's unthinkable you know it's heretical it's sacrilege do it do it now um line outs i was just saying just do every do anything different but do not keep throwing to that position in the line out i'm gonna i'm gonna punch somebody like i was like that is so i'm hating that i'm seeing the same thing over and over and see the guys on the bench you know like corpus visa's head just go down you know down and almost like not wanting to watch the next line out so the ability to do that in a hot in a hot match where temperature is crazy and you're going a million miles your brain is going a million miles an hour but you have to have to say to yourself we're 15 minutes in and it looks like we're just going to get battered here we're just going to get battered that's what brian Brian O'Driscoll said to me, he said, at the end of the match, he said, so, yeah, your boys got battered. That's what he said. And I was like, not my boys, but sure, tonight they are. And there was no other word.

And I thought, like, it was too meek. It was like going to the principal's office to get your cuts and not even, you know, just going and saying, sure. I mean, a wise lens to the principal. Like, you had to break the bamboo, you know, you had to, like, kick a chair or something. Just disrupt it.

You know, we get mad at Russie sometimes for some of his unseemly behavior. But what I like about him is he never takes a loss lying down. He's going to do whatever he's got to do. He called it what it was. Yeah, they have to be brave, man.

Sometimes you just have to be brave. And so, listen, this is the final. In 40 minutes, this game will be over forever. The season will be over forever. Change it now.

Staten van Gaal has had a blinder against Glasgow. Yes. He had a night to just bring him on. What have we got to lose? Okay, maybe he gets injured, so what?

I mean, you're going to lose anyway. Try something. Something I wanted to talk to you. And Kubis Vese is a physical player, and the Bulls were getting dominated at the call face, at the actual collision area. So you've got someone.

You've got vessels. There are people there that just don't get dominated, and you've got to find the right mix. And I think, so here's what I think. There's a bit of a plan and a plan making and a planning mentality and a plan is good and plan, plan, plan. I get that.

I grew up with a dad who planned. We would go on holidays and everything was down to the, you know, the minutes. We're stopping in this town in Colesburg and we're going to go in to get some petrol and you have three minutes. You know, we have like an actual printed out piece of paper. And it was good for me.

The only boy in the family, my sister, is at hell there. But I think we stuck to the plan too much, if I was thinking this through. Like there was too much of a plan that didn't adapt to the punch in the nose, the Tysonian punch in the nose, which, just to be honest, was always going to happen. Leinster's been in a lot of finals. They got a lot of players who played British and Irish Lions, who beat the Wallabies to get the decider.

They're a team full of captains. They're a really, really smart team. So they were always going to have a little bit of a difference. What was the difference thing? they just made everything was was five percent quicker they just every single thing leinster did was five percent quicker i almost think that their their swing thought before the game was probably guys you know when you like speed up this pod and listen to 1.

5 or two times let's play like that let's play quick and um i haven't seen leinster play that quick in a long time it looked really beautiful to be honest uh i didn't like it i was suffering i was amongst suffering so i felt it but i looked at it as a rugby person and in the in the playback that i watched i was like jeez that was good i mean everything was good even that try that looked kind of lucky um the first one they were switched on i mean it was boot go boom score i was waiting for the ref to call them back for the advantage that was never given i honestly expected the whistle to go any moment and call them back no try was awarded it was weird wasn't it on the one hand i was thinking when you get advantages nowadays just take it you know just fumble the ball just take the scrum yeah yeah but three degree was really good at that like he never went long on he was like no i'm going cross kick immediately either you know we score or we go back um but you know if you use it up and oh that was a tough one that was in the bench was incensed about that like that literally made them so angry but they were still feeling about that when and by that time the score had already doubled you know and they were still fuming and so that's another thing about mind is i think it's good to have the grown-up on the bench there as well because they can if they're the right kind of person and they can and they can the right rugby whisperer they can get you okay go like that's done that's not great mark gary yeah great mark the rugby whisperer we need that just one one last thing you just mentioned how fast lindsay was playing and the one thing that we've been talking about a lot on this podcast is the fact how good the bulls conditioning is they are super fit super well managed so it wasn't a question of the condition that they couldn't keep up with leinster what what happened there why why couldn't they speed up for for example, where they just caught out and then flat-footed and couldn't think their way out of a paper bag, basically. No, I don't think the Bulls were less fit than Leinster. I think you're right. I think you're exactly right. This is a very fit Bulls team.

But being fit is still, that's like, what percentage of your capability are you? And the Bulls are high on the percentage. But they're not quick. It's not a quick back line. If I was Nina Arbhan and Tyler Blindell, I would have said that's the Achilles heel.

Is, you know, just if I swivel around, make you turn, make you scamper, Vili, Stravino, Harold, Pollard. It's not that quick anymore. Even KLA is, you know, is not the quickest guy that he used to be. Still great to watch him though. He always makes the first man miss.

But a great feat. but not just flat out quick. And even the Bulls guys on the bench were saying, like Tommy O'Brien, they go, wow, that guy can motor. I mean, like he has wheels. Hugo Keenan, bloody quick, you know, unbelievably quick.

So I think they did the right game plan. Leinster said, we're going to play the quickest rugby that we can possibly play. We're going to hammer down as much as we can. And then anyone who's tired coming off and someone else is going to come in and we're going to try and blow this game and finish it in the first half. I think that's literally what they probably had.

And so any adjustments at Oranges were academic, irrelevant. You had to have Oranges at 20 and change things and do things right now. You just got to change things. And you might not be able to do it in a nice, polite way. It might have been one of those, you know you just have to take the fight to them and it looked very early on that the Bulls had accepted their fate the the comeback was good and we all got up and we were jumping and high-fiving and and getting excited with that try that was disallowed because that really would have tries yeah well the second one in particular because that really would have made it was really on then it was really on you know not only was it a try But it was like the way it had been scored was replicable.

And you thought you could do that again. So I don't want to dismiss that idea. So I don't want to say that people weren't fighting. And you're exactly right. That the spirit was there, but the flesh was weak.

And so where that why was the flesh weak? And I think it's the missing element was the mind. Spirit was there. Body was there or thereabouts. but there was something in the decision-making ability and the adaptiveness to the situation right then and there.

This game right here, can you see it? Do you have the parachute eyeball? Nobody seemed to have it. And that's the kind of thing that Vili usually has, actually, by the way. That's part of why he can do so many try assists.

But you cannot do it if you're not on the field. And then also you come back on and you're in red arse because you're mad. and you want to do too much. And no one thinks well when they're angry. So, yeah, it all kind of snowballed.

Yeah, that's a problem. That replicability is a good word. I hope I pronounced it correctly. That second try, the one that was disallowed, the pass from Canaan being ruled forward, what happened there? Why could we score that try, the Bulls?

I mean, we, I mean the Bulls. What changed? What did they do differently? What suddenly cut open Leinster like that? That's replicable, like you just said.

and why didn't it happen again after that even though it was this allowed yeah people talk a lot about rock speed but the quickest rock is the rock that never happens so there were pick and goes where there wasn't really technically a rock at all and the bulls started going up the gut and the soft underbelly so if the if leinster was a bit quicker you know bulls are a little bit stronger tougher bigger and they just started rolling downhill and i think that the phrase people use about running downhill you know you can it's hard to define that but you can see it when it's happening the bulls started running downhill and you know your matchups then became scrambled you had to have little guys from leinster tackling big guys from the bulls it was always going to go the bulls way then everyone's falling over the gain line it just needed one offload and there you go you know then you you're behind the enemy lines there is no cover if you do pick and go and you bust a tackle, pick and go, and you beat a tackle and you offload, you're probably going to score. Almost all the time you score that because you've done one, two, one. So that was the simple break. And it sounds simple. Someone's got to beat a tackle and someone's got to beat the next tackle.

And so it's not that easy. The Bulls and the Lions were best in the season at breaking tackles, at beating defenders. So that was always going to be their best bet. I don't know. In some ways, early on, it felt like the Bulls were going wide too quickly, and they were getting isolated.

And maybe even they were being too urgent, too frantic to get there. You know, that sort of spilled the ball, and a lot of turnovers lost. You know, Kane and Moody lost eight turnovers on his own. That's a mile. So, like, Leinster lost the ball 16 times.

One guy, one Bull lost it eight times. So, yeah, you know, I think you've got to recognize that rugby is different nowadays and that you lose in a blitz. You lose in a short period of time. You can say whatever you want and say, well, the boxing Wellington, they were, they were, it was, it was even. And then there was just like this 10, 15 minute burst.

So what? That's how the rugby is being played. That's how Bordeaux beat Leinster. So, you know, I think the Bulls had to do whatever they had to do to not allow that burst to happen. And that meant that you've got to throw all your team sheets out and your game plans on that night when you see that your weak link is going to make you go and lose the game before oranges, you've got to pull him off before oranges.

Yeah, and give him off. Just on that subject again, I talked to you about earlier, about changing the game plan. One of the things, I think back to that game against the Lions where they just comprehensively dismantled the Lions, going up the middle, over and over. I call it like a tsunami, unstoppable. But yet in the final, they want to go wide, wide, wide.

Isn't that a sign of the game plan that might have changed a bit? Yeah, but to be fair, when I think back on it, it was early on the Bulls started doing that, going wide to wide, shifting field, left to right, right to left. And it works fine if you can get people to the ruck, but, you know, Leinster was quick to the ruck. And so a guy like Josh van der Fleur had a, quietly, just quietly, Josh van der Fleur had a great game. He was there.

He was the first man to the ruck a lot. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Harry. I think we've covered most of it.

We're probably going to get, you know, taken on for what we didn't talk about. But yeah, I think we covered most of it. I'm not going to talk about the referee. I always think it's after the meal, you know. And also Johan Akerman said specifically the ref had no influence.

You have to live with what the ref is calling on the day. it's no use doing a you know hindsight thing kind of thing so anyway i think this was the most comprehensive one i've done so far and i've seen so far thank you for that i appreciate it man awesome yeah and thanks to the bulls for having me it was great to be there yeah we'll do it we'll think about it next time you seem to be a bit of a bad omen but i have to think about your presence overall i'm very good luck i'm telling you but this was just and i also we have to say the bulls have been doing this for a while like i wasn't there a year ago yeah you could have made you You could have been the one that made the difference. You never know. That would have been a good story. Yeah, that would have been awesome.

Have a good one. Later. This is the Lekker Rugby Pod, only on Megaphone Rugby.

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