Author: Blue
Blue
Officially Australia's number one self proclaimed Blue Bulls fan. It's a tough gig, but someone has to do it.
Welcome to this week’s foreign dispatches. There were three oh-so-un-Australian games this weekend, with the first being very close to the author’s heart, but not in a good way. Let’s have a look what the great unwashed got up to this past weekend. Chiefs vs Bulls in Hamilton on Friday Chiefs won 28-12 The Cowbells rang in Hamilton, but not to welcome any Bulls. I will admit that I did not know all that much about the new Bulls coach, Nollis Marais, before he took the reigns last season. He talked up a good game, waxing lyrically of transforming the…
“He came, he saw, he banned more than one pass per backline move and thankfully he buggered the hell off.” That’s probably how most Sharks fans would describe Jake White’s tenure in Durban. 2014 Recap Much was made of the reunion between the World Cup winning coach and his General John Smit, now the CEO of Sharks Rugby. White’s legacy in Durban could have been so different had he not suffered the misfortune of losing his first and second choice flyhalves to injury (Lambie and then Zeilinga). This forced him to field rookie Tim Swiel at pivot, only to settle…
To illustrate what has happened to the Bulls since winning their last championship in 2010, one only needs to look at their dwindling crowd numbers. In 2013, the Bulls averaged 24,619 fans per home game. That figure dropped to a measly 16,434 in 2014 – a 33% decrease. The picture looks even worse when we consider that in 2007 more than one million fans came through the turnstiles at Loftus. Only 427,000 bothered in 2014. The Bulls have work to do. They simply need to win again if they want to put the bums in seats. 2014 was slated as…