Bulls’ humiliation at the hands of Leinster was not by chance

HINDSIGHT is a scurrilous science because it is easy to be a genius when you have it, yet when we saw how a Leinster team containing 12 British and Irish Lions obliterated the Bulls, you wonder why many South Africans thought the South Africans had a realistic chance in the URC final in Dublin.

- MIKE GREENAWAY

The Bulls were shut out, shut down and shut up by a Leinster team masquerading as the Ireland national team.

And the Dubliners did it from the first minute. They smashed the Bulls back in every aspect of the game and 80 minutes later, the Bulls had not fashioned one single attacking movement comprising more than four phases.

In short, they did not fire a shot in crumbling to an embarrassing 32-7 defeat, their third loss in URC finals in the last four years. It will be crushing for Jake White and his team — they lost to the Stormers in the first URC final, last year they failed to pitch up when favourites against the Glasgow Warriors in Pretoria, and now a humiliation in Dublin. And it will hurt the Bulls all the more that the chief architect of their destruction was former Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber. The Leinster defence completely smothered any Bulls’ attempt to attack.