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Bulls still hurt by mauling

Pretoria - Blue Bulls coach Pine Pienaar has admitted that his team learnt some 'expensive' lessons in their heavy hammering at the hands of the Golden Lions last week.

According to Rugby365's website, Pienaar will want his side to show a little more assertiveness in match situations and focus on correcting the errors which allowed them to be erroneously run over by Johan Ackermann's men.

"They (the Sharks) also have a new coaching panel and will grow as the season goes on, so it is going to be tough in Durban this week," Pienaar said, when asked about his team's prospects of bouncing back from last week's demoralising loss.

"However, what we must focus on, is fixing up all those errors that cost us so dearly against the Lions.

"We have to control the game," Pienaar said.

"On the 45-minute mark we were leading 23-20 against the Lions and we lost 23-62," he added.

"That is where certain inexperienced players in certain positions must ensure they get through this and take control of the game - that is what I would like to see."

Pienaar said that his team needed to clearer in the decisions they take as he felt this contributed to their downfall at Loftus last weekend.

"Where we should have attacked (against the Lions), we sometimes kicked, or when the situation called for a tactical kick we kept the ball in hand.

"Against the Sharks we need to ensure our set pieces are spot on - our scrums and line-outs.

"The Sharks are also good at rolling mauls and the Lions put us under pressure with two mauls that resulted in tries - we have to ensure we are better with those.

"Then we need to get more room on attack and attack the space with ball in hand."

Pienaar also pointed out that his team's discipline against the Golden Lions was also a concern and that they were made to pay for their over-exuberance.

"Also, our discipline was poor," he said.

"Although we only conceded 11 penalties, it was the times and the places where we conceded those penalties that put us under pressure," Pienaar added.

"The Lions got a lot of momentum from their rolling mauls (which came after those penalties), especially when we were putting them under pressure it allowed them to put us back under pressure.

"In that last half-hour we gifted them far too many soft tries.

"When the score started to balloon and we chased the game, the more mistakes we made and the more they benefited from those.

"It was an expensive lesson to learn, but it was already Round Three and we have to ensure we improve dramatically on our performance against the Lions."

The reshuffle caused major disruptions - with Ulrich Beyers at fullback and Jürgen Visser at flyhalf for almost an hour.

Also, the yellow card of Morné Mellett (in the 50th minute) cost us dearly," Pienaar said.

"In the time that he was off they put 21 points on the board - that is unacceptable. Also, to concede eight tries is also unacceptable to us.

"Those are not the standards we set for ourselves,"he added.
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