Bulls v Sharks: Winners and losers as JP Pietersen’s ‘low-key big call’ continues to pay-off while another backfires
Sharks coach JP Pietersen and an inset of Bulls winger Seb de Klerk.
Following the Bulls’ 41-12 United Rugby Championship victory over the Sharks at Loftus Versfeld, here are our winners and losers.
Winners
Johan Ackermann
The Bulls boss was already under the cosh after a dire run of results, which included a 21-12 defeat to the Sharks last December. However, Johan Ackermann made changes to his coaching staff over the Christmas period and those alterations are starting to really have an impact.
Against the Sharks, the lineout operated well, the kicking tactics were on point and when the opportunities arose to strike, they struck. It was perhaps the most compelling performance of the four successive victories the team has enjoyed so far.
The Bulls had clearly done their homework and when it came to executing on the day, they did. Ackermann got his selections spot on and while his bench didn’t completely blow the Sharks off the park, the overall team performance will give fans a lot more belief.
With a week off before three straight home fixtures against the Stormers, Munster and Cardiff, there is a good feel around Loftus again and going two from three would be a fantastic and frankly achievable return, putting them squarely back in for a quarter-final finish.
Andre Esterhuizen
It was a sobering defeat for the Sharks at altitude but one player stood head and shoulders above the rest, Andre Esterhuizen. The most notable change that JP Pietersen made when taking over from John Plumtree was making the powerhouse Springboks midfielder his captain and he has been repaid in spades.
Making him the skipper was a low-key big call considering the number of players that were ahead of him in the queue in Siya Kolisi, Eben Etzebeth and even Vincent Tshituka and Phepsi Buthlezi.
There are certainly learning curves for Esterhuizen still, a handful of questionable decisions against the Lions a few weeks back, but all in all he has been a positive influence and somehow he performances may have even improved – if that’s possible.
The Sharks were off the pace on Saturday but the agent of chaos was not. There simply wasn’t a better player in a black and white jersey on the pitch at Loftus and even in South Africa right now.
Elrigh Louw
Tongues are wagging about Cameron Hanekom’s imminent return to action after seven months on the sidelines, meaning that Elrigh Louw’s reinstatement in the Bulls’ back-row has somewhat flew under the radar.
He has been in action since late November but against the Sharks, he was really hitting his straps. Louw was central to the Boks’ success in 2024 before missing the entirety of last year’s international season. So it comes as no surprise that he has been included in the first Springboks alignment camp of the year.
While Embrose Papier stole the headlines with another stunning display, Louw was the leading force in the battering ram Bulls forward pack, combining brilliantly with Ruan Nortje, Marcell Coetzee and company. After the Bok number eight jersey endured a crisis of sorts last year, the stocks have been replenished and are in rude health.
Embrose Papier
Kick, run, pass and tries. Embrose Papier’s performance had it all and sparked the calls for his Springboks recall once again. The 28-year-old has been arguably the most consistent scrum-half in South Africa for the past two or three seasons and while he got an alignment invite once last year, he hasn’t convinced Erasmus and his staff enough to earn a call this time around.
The injury to Jaden Hendrikse may open the opportunity to board the flight for Cape Town next week, and it will still be thoroughly deserved.
Seb de Klerk
While it’s shocking that Papier isn’t getting a look into the Springboks’ squad, it’s unsurprising that Seb de Klerk is on Erasmus’ radar.
He took his try tally for the season to five by crossing over against the Sharks, which is hardly a mind-boggling return, but the 25-year-old’s strengths lie with his blistering pace, relentless work-rate and his excellent decision-making in space.
His aerial ability is something that won’t go unnoticed either while his defensive ability has notably improved this campaign. The Springboks wing stocks are flowing with world-class talents but De Klerk is certainly breaking away from the chasing pack and perhaps he might just earn a Test debut.
Jan-Hendrik Wessels
Jan-Hendrik Wessels’ ability to play loosehead prop and hooker is well-documented, but he has spent a fair amount of the season in the former position rather than the latter.
Erasmus and scrum coach Daan Human clearly rate the 24-year-old incredibly highly and rightly so. The Boks have been on the lookout for a third hooker behind Malcolm Marx and Bongi Mbonambi and they obviously have an option in Wessels.
His lineouts were accurate and he has an engine that simply cannot be matched by front rowers in South Africa. He played a full 80 minutes against the Sharks and while many players could certainly do that, not many can replicate Wessels’ athletic ability or match his work-rate.
Wessels was a prodigy coming out of Grey Bloem and is now really delivering on that early promise.
Lions
The victories on either side of the Juskei River on Saturday meant that the Lions were crowned the South African Shield victors for the 2025/26 season, taking the title from the Sharks.
Lions boss Ivan van Rooyen reluctantly said that he’d be supporting the Gauteng neighbours in the later kick-off so his team could emerge the shield winners.
At the start of the season, few would have predicted that the Joburgers would clinch the shield, especially considering how well the Stormers started their campaign but four wins from six SA derbies sealed the deal for the men in red who are now well within a shot of securing a place in the URC knockouts.
Losers
JP Pietersen
The honeymoon period is officially over for Pietersen as he has overseen back-to-back defeats as the permanent head coach of the Sharks. The Durbanites enjoyed the new coach bounce when he took interim charge of the team from Plumtree but that was always going to fade and so it did.
The Springboks legend and now faces the biggest challenge of his young coaching career, turning things around and finding consistency in performance and results – something that the experienced Plumtree struggled to accomplish.
It’s a far cry from panic stations as an overhaul of the Sharks’ structures needs time to really take shape and have its desired impact.
Jurenzo Julius
Another change that has borne fruit for Pietersen in recent matches was shifting Jurenzo Julius into the inside centre position in the absence of Esterhuizen, whom he partnered against the Bulls.
Julius was an outrageous talent at the under-20s level and has impressed at times at the highest level but much like the Sharks, he has struggled to find consistency which hasn’t been helped by the depth of the team’s centre stocks. Pietersen shifting him closer to the action paid dividends recently, but he was not on song against the Bulls with a plethora of handling errors and a handful of penalties conceded.
His run of form this year left many baffled as to why Erasmus did not offer him an invite to the Springboks’ alignment camp but his performance against the Bulls exposed the areas of his game that need sharpening up. At 21 years old, he has plenty of growth ahead of him and this is more of a stumble than a setback.
Jaco Williams
Ditto for Jaco Williams. He grabbed three tries in two matches against the Stormers, starting on the wing against the URC high-flyers. He repaid Pietersen’s faith in him in those two outings, so much so that when Aphelele Fassi was ruled out of the clash against the Bulls, he was the man that the coach trusted to fill the number 15 jumper.
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However, his third start for the Sharks didn’t go nearly as smoothly as his first two. The Bulls managed to cause all kinds of havoc with their kicking game and he was undone for the host’s first three tries. Canan Moodie managed to chip him, De Klerk stepped him and Papier outpaced him. He looked to be carrying a strain when he left the pitch in the first half. He is bound to be a superstar for the Sharks in the future, near future in fact, and just had an off night at Loftus.
Jaden Hendrikse
It’s never a pleasant sight to see a player stretchered off the pitch. We wish Jaden Hendrikse a speedy recovery after he got his tackle technique wrong and copped a knee to his head.
As much as World Rugby attempts to make the game as safe as possible, incidents like this do occur in collision sports. It only emphasises the need to be technically sound going into contact – something Hendrikse usually is. He didn’t get it horribly wrong; it was a simple case of mistiming.
