Matfield to rest on tour

 

The veteran Springbok will play a role within the coaching team for the overseas leg in order to lend his experiance and provide mentoring  instead. This scenario was negotiated into Matfield's contract on his return to rugby action after his two year retirement.

 

The Bulls have the luxury of replacing the influential Matfield with their regular captain Flip van der Merwe who returns after a hamstring injury and will take the no.5 jersey as well as the captain's armband.

 

The other change to the starting pack that played against the Chiefs sees Jacques Engelbrecht comes in at no. 8 – with Dewald Potgieter moving to the side of the scrum in place of Jacques du Plessis, who moves to the bench.

 

Matfield and Jono Ross do not feature in the matchday 23.

 

"We are looking to start rotating players from now on and with the depth we have in the squad, it is something I don't mind doing," Ludeke said.

 

The Bulls departed Johannesburg on Tuesday afternoon and arrived in Auckland on Wednesday, where they stopped over, before departing for Napier on Thursday.

 

Bulls: 15 Jurgen Visser, 14 Akona Ndungane, 13 JJ Engelbrecht, 12 Jan Serfontein, 11 Bjorn Basson, 10 Jacques-Louis Potgieter, 9 Francois Hougaard, 8 Jacques Engelbrecht, 7 Dewald Potgieter, 6 Deon Stegmann, 5 Flip van der Merwe (captain), 4 Paul Willemse, 3 Werner Kruger, 2 Callie Visagie, 1 Dean Greyling.

Replacements: 16 Bongi Mbonambi, 17 Marcel van der Merwe, 18 Morné Mellett, 19 Grant Hattingh, 20 Jacques du Plessis, 21 Piet van Zyl, 22 Handré Pollard, 23 Ulrich Beyers.

 

Date: Saturday, April 5

Venue: McLean Park, Napier

Kick-off: 19.35 (06.35 GMT; 08.35 SA time)

Referee: Steve Walsh (Australia)

Assistant referees: Nick Briant (New Zealand), Shane McDermott (New Zealand)

TMO: Ben Skeen (New Zealand)