Bulls 50 Highlanders 35
Highlanders coach Glenn Moore is taking positives out of his side's loss to the Bulls yesterday but says poor one-on-one tackling cost them dearly.
He said if his team played a whole game like it did for three-quarters of one yesterday, it should make an impact in the competition.
The Highlanders started stone-cold against the Bulls in Pretoria, slumping to 21-0 after just 11 minutes and facing a thumping of huge proportions.
But they bounced back, finally finding some ball and hanging on to it to score five tries, though they never got close to the home team as the South Africans won by 15 points.
Moore said the shocking start was simply a case of the Highlanders having a poor few minutes.
"For the first two or three minutes we handled the ball all right, but then they got away on us. The next 12 or so minutes was very costly," he said from Pretoria.
"It was simply a case of one-on-one tackles being missed. When the high balls were going up we were not taking them and that helped them get a roll on.
"But our guys showed huge ticker to come back and score those five tries. Our attack went quite well. We looked at some channels to attack through and open them up, and that seemed to work."
Moore said to score five tries after such a poor start was a credit to the spirit in the team.
"We scored some really good tries and in fact bombed about three more.
"The first 15 minutes was really disappointing but we showed for the rest of it that we were up to the task."
- OTAGO DAILY TIMES
