Western Province Outshine Wounded Bulls

Week 2 of Currie Cup – the North verse South derby in the Mother City. We always knew it was going to be a cracker, and it was, producing a final score of 41 – 17 to the home side who made a crowd of around 17,000 proud.

Province showed resilient defense in the opening stanza which would be the theme of the match. The home side visited the Bulls 22, and Nic Groom tapped and offloaded to speedster Seabelo Senatla for the opening try.

Blue Bulls were awarded a penalty after threatening Province line for a prolonged period of time. Western Province set up a driving maul in the corner and Pat Cilliers was the man who benefited off a loose ball to hop over for the teams second try.

Nizaam Carr picked up another try for WP when he received a short ball from lock Jean Klyn to dive over.

The visiting side come out the lockers after the break playing with some assurance, and even Stormers lock Manuel Carizza was sent off with a yellow card following an unnecessary slap-down in the lineout. The Bulls tried to seize the opportunity, but Province responded well and  swung the ball out wide to the far corner where Seabelo Senatla dotted down for his second try and the teams bonus point try.

Province players repeatedly find themselves offside and Cobus Van Wyk was also shown a yellow card. Despite the two yellow cards Western Province showed plenty of heart on defence and managed to get out of their red zone without conceding. WP then turned their defence into attack and as a result, Michael Rhodes drove over Bulls line for WP’s fifth.

Once again the Pretoria side didn’t give up and continued to attack but the Province defense is solid. However, the Blue Bulls do get a reward as replacement hooker, Bongi Mbonambi, finally gets over the tryline.

In the dying seconds of the game, Cheslin Kobe produced a great piece of work and sliced through the traffic, beating four Bulls players on the way and delivered a no look pass to skipper Juan De Jongh to cross over for a simple five-pointer.