Kriel blow for Bulls
Marais named an unchanged pack to play the Rebels at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday – their first home game for the 2016 Super Rugby tournament.
However, an injury to Springbok Jesse Kriel will see Burger Odendaal start in the midfield.
Odendaal will start at inside centre and Jan Serfontein at outside centre.
This enforced change will also see Dries Swanepoel move onto the bench as a replacement for Odendaal and could run on in his first match at this level.
"I said last week that I back our squad and although we let ourselves and our supporters down last weekend, I am confident that we can turn things around," Marais said.
"We performed poorly in some areas of our game and paid the price. I am confident that we can turn that around and deliver a much better result in our first home match of the season," the coach added.
"We are under pressure to deliver on the expectations from our loyal fans and the Rebels will certainly not make it any easier for us. They showed against the Force last weekend that they can win tough matches away from home and play for 80 minutes.
"They edged us last year, so will travel here with a lot of confidence. In fact, I think they are the favourites for this match."
The coach was adamant that his troops will be better this week.
"We know we can do much better. We worked hard this week and those small niggles were sorted out. We will need better possession and it is an area we will focus on."
Lock Grant Hattingh will play in his 50th Super Rugby match.
He made his debut for the Lions in 2012 and played in nine matches for the team.
The Bulls captain, Adriaan Strauss, was pretty pleased that Hattingh will bring up his half-ton.
"Grant really played well last weekend," Strauss said.
"He has been a real stalwart for the team in the last couple of seasons and I am pretty pleased that he can achieve his 50 match milestone in front of his home crowd at Loftus.
"That said, a real team effort will be needed to beat the Rebels.
"They are a very difficult team to play against as they play intelligent rugby and vary their game well. It is difficult to pin them down."
Bulls: 15 Warrick Gelant, 14 Travis Ismaiel, 13 Jan Serfontein, 12 Burger Odendaal, 11 Bjorn Basson, 10 Francois Brummer, 9 Rudy Paige, 8 Arno Botha, 7 Jannes Kirsten, 6 Nic de Jager, 5 Grant Hattingh, 4 Rudolph Snyman, 3 Marcel van der Merwe, 2 Adriaan Strauss (captain), 1 Trevor Nyakane.
Replacements: 16 Jaco Visagie, 17 Lizo Gqoboka, 18 Hencus van Wyk, 19 Jason Jenkins, 20 Roelof Smit, 21 Piet van Zyl, 22 Tian Schoeman, 23 Dries Swanepoel
Date: Saturday, March 5
Venue: Loftus Versfeld, Pretoria
Kick-off: 15.00 (00.00 Sunday, March 6 AEDT; 13.00 GMT)
Referee: Ben O'Keeffe (New Zealand)
Assistant referees: Mike Fraser (New Zealand), Stuart Berry (South Africa)
TMO: Marius Jonker (South Africa)
