RUGBY NEWS - The City of Pretoria must be a capital place to be around in a week like this.
Gone is the mediocracy that weaved its tentacles around almost everything of value throughout the country.
Today, for the first time in what feels like forever, we all look at the Jacaranda city with a renewed sense of hope. It is a place now where people are digging through the ruins to find those dreams that once filled the hearts of the nation.
There is a new man in charge, you see, and he’s a man that is willing to completely break with the recent past and rebuild – or even better - that which we all once held dear.
He is a man that could see immediately how it was greed, personal interests, and an inept leadership core that was gnawing away at the very fabric of our society, and he wasted little time in nullifying these forces of evil.
And all of this is happening a mere stone’s throw away from the Union Buildings. And by a New Zealander nogals.
Let no-one doubt- even for a second - the significance of Saturday’s 21-19 win by the Bulls over the Hurricanes. It’s more than just a set of numbers in a results column, it is the first proof that something big is brewing on the horizon.
The contrast between this year’s Bulls and that of the last number years cannot be more stark. This is the first time that they have won an opening Super Rugby fixture in six years, and the first time they’ve beaten any New Zealand side since 2015.
But it is the way in which they dismantled the highly-rated Kiwis that stood out most. It was not a win built on the traditional recipe of set-piece dominance and unerring goal-kicking, no this time round they clinched it by matching the Hurricanes for fitness, skills and ambition.
