Away game no issue for Bulls

Pretoria - Bulls coach Frans Ludeke says they don't mind playing the Crusaders away from home in their Super Rugby playoff clash on Saturday.

The Bulls’ 37-20 bonus point victory pver the Lions on Saturday secured them a spot in the playoffs after they failed to progress to the next stage of last year’s competition.

In taking full points from the match, the Bulls moved past the Sharks on the log, leaving the coastal side with a playoff-match against the Reds in Brisbane.

A match against the Reds was regarded as a slightly easier prospect and a victory without the bonus-point try would have seen the Bulls travel to Australia, rather than having to face the Crusaders in New Zealand.

Ludeke, however, said they had no intention of manipulating the victory as they only had the playoff in mind.

“We knew before the game that we need to be our best and it was a must win for us,” Ludeke said.

“There was never talk in the side about permutations.

"We said that we needed to win and if we got a lead, we needed to build on that and make sure we made the playoffs.”

The Bulls' mentor said the playoffs would pose a different challenge to his side.

“All that happened through the season is now irrelevant,” Ludeke said.

“It is about teams that can handle the pressure - it doesn’t matter if you play home or away.

“We’ve shown that we can travel and we need to focus on our own game plan and we need to be accurate.”

The Pretoria-based side, however, need to work on their scrums ahead of next week’s match after they came undone in this area of play against the Lions.

“I think in the scrums they really came at us and I think we weren’t good enough and accurate enough there,” Ludeke said.

“There were some unforced errors that broke our rhythm a bit, but the second half was much more clinical.

“We didn’t allow the Lions to really get going especially from drives and penalties.

"We cleaned up our act discipline-wise as well.”

Ludeke said while his side struggled in the scrums, he felt the Lions deserved credit for a dominant performance in the set-piece.