South Africa No. 8 Pierre Spies returned from injury to bolster the Bulls yesterday for their Super 14 clash with the Otago Highlanders.
Spies was named in coach Frans Ludeke’s team and will play alongside flanker Dewald Potgieter, who makes his first Super 14 start of the season.
Potgieter came off the bench against the New South Wales Waratahs two weeks ago and has made use of the Bulls’ bye week to fully recover from his early season knee strain. Spies has also overcome a knee problem that kept him out of the 48-38 win over the Waratahs.
Derick Kuun will continue as openside flanker with Deon Stegmann named on the bench. Danie Rossouw moves from No. 8 to lock.
“The selection of Derick at openside is also part of the rotational understanding we have,” Ludeke said. “All the players, Deon [Stegmann] included, accept this policy.” Ludeke’s reigning Super 14 champion team leads the standings with a maximum 15 points from its three games. The Bulls have scored 149 points in the process.
Springboks lock Victor Matfield will captain the team for the 50th time on Saturday and is set to play his 99th Super rugby match.
Scrumhalf Fourie du Preez was also named despite fears over a sprained ankle at training this week.
The unbeaten Bulls are the overwhelming favorite to win at Loftus Versfeld after New Zealand’s Otago was routed 33-0 by the Stormers in Cape Town last weekend.
Ludeke said he was not relying on past form.
“They [Otago] did play badly against the Stormers. They have a strong set phase and with Tom Donnelly in the lineouts, can be very difficult opponents,” he said. “They created enough chances against the Stormers and we realize that our A-game will be needed to beat them.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier