Johan Ackermann demands more from Bulls ahead of Lions ‘revenge’ derby

The Bulls may have won their last two matches, but coach Johan Ackermann is keeping his troops grounded following the horror of their recent seven-match losing streak.

The Bulls returned home on Sunday from a dogged 19-17 defeat of Edinburgh and have already turned their attention to this week’s "revenge" SA derby against the Lions at Ellis Park. In November last year, the Lions shocked the Bulls 43-33 in Pretoria.

In Edinburgh, the Bulls started slowly and had to overcome a 17-5 half-time deficit to secure the spoils. For Ackermann, the result was too close for comfort.

“We all strive for that perfect game where you finish every 22m entry, so that is a big work-on,” Ackermann said.

“I think the first positive is that we made Edinburgh work hard in that first half.

"Even though we made some silly errors and gave them opportunities, we really made them work. And then in the second half, we got what we needed.

"It was early points just to get back in the game. We missed a fair bit of opportunities — we had a few penalties, line-out mauls and scrums — but the composure was probably the big thing.

“We played in an area where we could have controlled the game and, when it counted, we got the points that we needed. But in the future, starting this week against the Lions, we have to be more clinical.”

Ackermann said that against the Lions, he wants his charges to maintain their intensity rather than playing in spells.

“You seldom will have all the momentum or control the game for 80 minutes. But we can’t have those fluctuations, those massive highs and massive lows. It will help if we can get more consistency in our 80 minutes overall and drop our error rate.”

As expected from the Bulls forwards, the set-piece work was mostly immaculate, especially in the scrums.

“Early on, we got the dominance at scrum time. And when we had to get the line-outs to score more tries, it worked. So, yes, there were pleasing moments,” Ackermann added.

Looking ahead to the Lions, the coach said his team would not hold anything back.

“We must just go in and embrace the challenge," Ackermann said.

"They were very good when they beat us at Loftus. It’s a massive challenge for us to now go to Ellis Park and see if we can get a result. We have to recover from our trip and make sure we are refreshed for what will be a highly physical battle.”