RUGBY NEWS - Former Southern Kings flanker Thembelani Bholi may well be the surprise inclusion in the Vodacom Bulls starting line-up for their opening Vodacom Super Rugby game against the Hurricanes at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday.
Bholi has impressed immensely in the pre-season outings against the Jaguares and Sharks in particular and with some of the pre-season plans not going perfectly in terms of selection, coach John Mitchell may well turn to the flanker to fill the gap left by some unfortunate timing this week.
Jannes Kirsten and Jason Jenkins – the latter being a lock who Mitchell believes can play blindside flank as well – are both still recovering from injury and are a week away from action, while co-captain Nic de Jager simply hasn’t had the minutes that Mitchell wanted players to have in the pre-season.
Therefore, Bholi’s name comes up again and again, and based on performances could well see him slot in on Saturday.
Mitchell could well still stay with De Jager, but he did confirm that he didn’t want to risk any players with a long season waiting ahead.
“Yeah we’re not too bad, we came unscathed on the weekend. Obviously Jason won’t make it. If you look at the whole pre-season, the blindside position has been the only position that we haven’t been able to get enough minutes into the position,” Mitchell said.
“We’ve had Jannes (Kirsten) returning to play, we had Jason who we wanted to give more minutes to and Nic (de Jager) hasn’t had a lot of minutes either. Hendre Stassen as well.
