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A Springbok and a giant prop prospect among 3 re-ups at the Bulls

By Kim Ekin
Cornal Hendricks

The Bulls have confirmed contract extensions for three players, including a Springbok and two of their most exciting young talents.

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Cornal Hendricks, Jan-Hendrik Wessels and Richard Kriel have allextended their time at the URC side.

The Tshwane-based side have confirm that Springbok Hendricks and exciting 20-year-old front-rower, Wessels, have re-signed with the team until 2024, while the 21-year-old fullback, Kriel has extended his stay at Loftus Versfeld until 2023.

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Wessels, who spent a season in France before returning to South Africa with the Bulls, is seen as a future Springbok.

A product of Grey College, his highlight reels went viral on Youtube in 2019, where his massive carries and scrummaging made him a standout on in the SA schoolboy circuit. As a result the 6’3, 120kg+ frontrower was scouted by Clermont and moved to France.

“Cornal Hendricks has proven to be a key figure of the Vodacom Bulls team, on and off the field. We are pleased to have been able to extend his contract with us until 2024,” said Vodacom Bulls director of rugby, Jake White.

“Part of our bigger vision is to nurture young talent and groom some of our youngsters to form part of the core of the Vodacom Bulls. As such, it is important that talented players like Jan-Hendrik Wessels and Richard Kriel – who are the future of Vodacom Bulls rugby – remain rooted at Loftus as we continue to build towards having a successful, world-class team.”

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It’s good news for White’s team, who have struggled so far in the URC with just one win in fives games.

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Nickers 1 hour ago
The changes Scott Robertson must make to address All Blacks’ bench woes

Hopefully Robertson and co aren't applying this type of thinking to their selections, although some of their moves this year have suggested that might be the case.


The first half of Foster's tenure, when he was surrounded by coaches who were not up to the task, was disastrous due to this type of reactionary chopping and changing. No clear plan of the direction of travel or what needs to be built to get there. Just constant tinkering. A player gets dropped one week, on the bench the next, back to starting the next, dropped for the next week again. Add in injuries and other variations of this selection pattern, combined with vastly different game plans from one week to the next and it's no wonder the team isn't clicking on attack and are making incredibly basic errors on both sides of the ball.


When Schmidt and Ryan got involved selections became far more consistent and the game plan far simpler and the dividends were instant, and they accepted bad performances as part of building towards the world cup. They were able to distinguish between bad plans and bad execution and by the time the finals rolled around they were playing their best rugby as a team.


Chopping and changing the team each week sends the signal that you don't really know what you are doing or why, and you are just reacting to what happened last week, selecting a team to replay the previous game rather than preparing for the next one and building for the future.

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