The walking wounded: Johan Ackermann's Bulls face injury headache ahead of Lions derby

Bulls coach Johan Ackermann says his players will have to be carefully managed ahead of next week’s SA Derby with the Lions after a bruising United Rugby Championship encounter with Edinburgh in the Scottish capital.

The Bulls showed great fortitude to come back from 17-5 down at half-time to win 19-17, but the precious table points came at a price, with the Bulls players resembling the walking wounded as they boarded their plane back to South Africa.

“Unfortunately, both Cheswill Jooste and Sebastian de Klerk picked up head knocks,” Ackermann said. “They’re both looking fine this morning, up and smiling and with us, but there will be a compulsory stand-down, so they won’t be available for the Lions game.”

The Bulls have won two games in a row — one in the Champions Cup and the other in the URC — and would love to stretch their winning run at Ellis Park after the Lions beat them last December at Loftus Versfeld. That painful defeat robbed the Bulls of confidence and intensified a horrible losing streak.

“There are a lot of sore bodies, a lot of cuts, bruises and stitches,” Ackermann explained. “That artificial surface (at Edinburgh’s Hive Stadium) took its toll, so recovery is massive for us now.”

One thing that is not injured is the Bulls’ pride. They return home with heads high after wins in Pau and Edinburgh, which emphatically snapped their losing streak of seven matches. Even when they were 12 points behind at half-time, the Bulls held their nerve.

“There was no panic,” the coach said. “Even at half-time, the feeling was that we could turn it around. There is a belief that we can put pressure on teams and score when we need to.

“It wasn’t pretty, but we’ll take it,” Ackermann added. “The mood is positive, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. It’s only another game ticked off, and there’s a lot of rugby left this season.”

Ackermann said that the Bulls have a long trip home because they fly via Paris. If it is any consolation, their opponents next week, the Lions, have a similar trip home from Wales, where they drew with the Ospreys, also on Friday night.

“We’re flying just after 11am (on Saturday), get to Paris around 1:30pm, then we sit at the airport for nine hours before our connection at 11:30pm,” Ackermann explained.

“We’ll only arrive in Johannesburg tomorrow (Sunday). It’s a long travel day, but unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about it.

“And we had a late night after the match. By the time we got back to the hotel, it was around 11pm, then dinner, and the earliest anyone got to bed was midnight. We were up and out by 8am. Not everyone sleeps well on planes, so our biggest challenge is to use the week smartly to freshen the bodies.”