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Cape Town - It was very much a case of bitter/sweet for the Bulls on Saturday as they triumphed 45-25 over the Rebels at Loftus to register their first Super Rugby win of the season.
The obvious positive was the victory as the Bulls recovered from their woeful 33-9 loss to the Stormers in week 1, but the glaring negative was that that they conceded four unanswered tries to lose a bonus point.
At one stage, the Bulls led 42-3 having scored six tries to none, but the Rebels then clawed their way back into the contest to deny Marais's charges a five-point haul.
"There was 20 minutes in the second half where we just let them back into the game. We should have had the bonus point … we should have finished them off," Marais said afterwards.
"It’s something we’re working on. Happy with the win but I would have liked the five points.
"We gave them too much momentum with the penalties … 5 penalties in the last 20 minutes which is not a good thing.
"We were 42-3 ahead. We were really poor for 20 minutes in the second half. I’m not happy about that."
With the score at 42-20 and with the try count reading 6-3 in favour of the Bulls, skipper Adriaan Strauss somewhat surprisingly opted to have a shot at goal when the field position looked good to set up an attacking from a set piece.
"We were stuck on that score for quite a while and it was frustrating for us. We had a couple of opportunities to go score and we couldn’t convert … we just wanted to get the scoreboard going again," Strauss explained.
"There was still a lot of time to go and get that try."
The Bulls have a bye this weekend.
