Johan Ackermann believes the Vodacom Bulls will take valuable lessons from their 50-19 defeat to the All Blacks as they build towards the new URC season.
The Bulls were beaten by eight tries to three at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday, but Ackermann was keen to focus on the experience gained by a group that had only recently returned to training following their extended URC campaign.
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The Bulls coach admitted that more preparation time would have helped them close the gap on New Zealand, but believes the experience will ultimately benefit his players.
“If they can [make] this whole thing later, we could have had another three or four weeks, we probably would have given the All Blacks a better game for their preparation,” Ackermann said.
“But don’t take away what we got from it. I know I said it disrupted our pre-season, but after tonight I do know that we’ll take a lot out of the game in terms of what we can work on. As coaches, we’re excited about what we saw, and it’s great for the players to now know what it takes to play at that level. It’s an experience I think they’ll keep forever.”
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The Bulls now have a short window to turn those lessons into tangible improvements before their URC campaign begins.
They will have one warm-up match against the Stormers on 11 September before opening their European campaign against Zebre.
The players will get a week off before returning to training, with Ackermann identifying conditioning as the immediate priority.
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“The boys have got a week off now and then we’re back, and then there’s, I think, three weeks before we play the Stormers and then there’s one week of fine-tuning and then into the URC,” he said.
“We’ve got a few weeks to get the guys ready. We’ll take a lot out of this game and work on that, but there are also one or two things we want to add in the next couple of weeks. The main priority will be our conditioning, to get our conditioning sorted.”
Photo: Johan Orton/Gallo Images
