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Johannesburg - Vodacom Bulls captain Victor Matfield came out in support of his beleaguered lock partner Bakkies Botha after the Bulls lock was handed a four week ban for “dangerously entering a ruck” by a SANZAR judiciary committee.
Matfield, who will lead the defending Vodacom Super 14 champions out against the Crusaders at Orlando Stadium on Saturday, said the team accepted the verdict, but felt sorry for Botha, who will now miss the Super 14 semis and final, as well as a part of the international season.
“Bakkies is a great player and it is always tough to lose great players. He hasn’t played a lot this year, but he is the type of player that gells a team together. Players like Flip (van der Merwe) and Danie (Rossouw) have played well this year, but it’s always a big loss to lose someone like Bakkies.”
There is a general feeling in the Bulls camp that if the size difference between Botha and Gio Aplon wasn’t so great, it would never have elicited a citing, especially as there were other incidents of a similar nature in the game which went unpunished.
While the Bulls High Performance manager Ian Schwartz stepped in to stop questions about Botha for fear of retribution by SANZAR and a possible disciplinary for speaking their minds, Matfield did leave a poignant, and telling thought about what the Bulls feel about the outcome of the citing.
“It’s tough on a guy like Bakkies who uses such force on the field in everything he does. Other players do the same thing at rucks but not with the same force. If it was me that went in like that in a ruck, it wouldn’t look nearly as bad. That’s one of his strengths, the manner that he plays full out and why he is picked in a team,” Matfield said.
It was left up to Frans Ludeke to provide the diplomatic answer on the Botha question, and while the team feels they are targeted in a week when Crusaders prop Ben Franks wasn’t even cited for a tackle without arms that left Stephen Moore with a broken jaw, they will accept the outcome and move on.
“Bakkies is a huge part of our system and it is always bad to lose a guy like that,” Ludeke said, “But we’re lucky to have depth there and to win a competition like this you have to have depth. We will accept the call by the disciplinary and all we’ve ever asked is for transparency. The system is fair and we will move on.”
The Bulls face the Crusaders at Orlando Stadium in an historic semi-final on Saturday.
