Willie le Roux addresses Jacques Nienaber situation before facing former boss

Two-time World Cup winner Willie le Roux says that the Bulls have already laid to rest the ghosts of last season’s United Rugby Championship Grand Final defeat to Leinster, and it will have no bearing on Friday night’s clash.

Le Roux, who was part of the Springboks’ back-to-back World Cup-winning sides in 2019 and 2023, admits that 12 months ago the Bulls never “turned up” at Croke Park and suffered a 32-7 defeat.

The full-back watched helplessly as the Bulls conceded three tries in the opening 23 minutes and says that he still feels disappointed with the result, but insists this is a chapter led by a new coaching team under Johan Ackermann.

“We see this as a new year, a new season. As a team, we have new goals, got some new players, and new personnel in the coaching staff, so it’s all new for us.

“If you look at us at the start of the season, I think we lost about five on the trot, and then they said we were going to make the quarters even, or get to a top eight. But we managed to fight our way back with a couple of good wins overseas.

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“We managed to beat Scarlets away, which we hadn’t done, I think, in all of the URC. We definitely won one or two games away from home that helped us out. That gave us the opportunity, and we managed to end up in fourth place and get that home quarter-final,” he said.

Le Roux believes that any defence coached by Jacques Nienaber is going to be hard to break down, and he predicts that Leinster are going to be no exception.

“Jacques is an incredible coach, and they’re going to be very hard to break down and very hard to play against. So, it’s gonna be a massive challenge. Even if you know what’s coming, it’s still hard to go through them and go around them.

“Knowing Jacques a bit doesn’t help you to do the things on the field, where you only have a split second to make a decision to make,” added le Roux.