Phiwe Nomlomo lauded the character of the Vodacom Bulls as the 2024 Currie Cup front-runners fought back to beat DHL Western Province for a second time this season.

Jaco van der Walt scored 25 points as Nomlomo’s charges overturned a 24-point deficit to down WP in an 11-try thriller at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday.

Trailing 27-3 after 37 minutes, the Bulls responded with seven tries to clinch a 50-34 victory and extend their impressive start to this year’s edition of rugby’s oldest competition to four wins.

The Herd opened their campaign with a narrow win against WP at a wet Cape Town Stadium in round 1, and speaking post-match on Saturday, Nomlomo highlighted Van der Walt’s score before the break as the catalyst for the north-south derby victory.

“The try we scored just before half time was the game-changer,” the head coach told reporters. “It was very calm in the changeroom at half time because we spoke about a couple of things we needed to get right.

“There wasn’t massive chat or hanahana [indecisiveness], it was solution-driven and that’s all it is [that contributed to victory]. We learnt a lot.

“There’s a lot of teams in the competition that are talking about how young their squad is, as if they’re the only teams that have a young squad. We have youngsters that we want to come through, and it was beautiful for us because we wanted to put them in difficult situations.”

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“We emptied our bench early on because that was the plan, and the guys had to do their job to finish. A guy like Juann Else got a longer run at hooker than usual so that was good for us to see what we’ve got. He’s still 21,” Nomlomo added.

“And the biggest learning, for me, was that we can play and that we don’t have to wait until the second half to do it. We can be more brave in the first half.”

The Bulls will renew hostilities with the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein on Friday, but Nomlomo will be sweating over the availability of winger Sergeal Petersen, who was replaced by Lionel Mapoe inside the opening five minutes on Saturday.

The Bulls coach, though, praised the response from his men to the setback: “One of the things we possibly wanted to do this week was play Lionel with Cornel Smit [in midfield], and they were both coming back from injury.

“As we would have it, Cornel picked up a niggle in the week and couldn’t play, and that’s why Lionel was on the bench.

“We were concerned whether he [Mapoe] could go the full 80 and he did incredibly well. The interesting thing is we made several changes in the week after we had named the side [internally] and losing Sergeal wasn’t ideal.

“However, you can see the character in the side that’s growing, the guys playing for one another and that’s so important to us.

“The biggest thing for us that we spoke about post-Province in the first game is it doesn’t matter what department doesn’t work, we still have to win games. So I’m chuffed that we found a way to win.”

On the severity of Petersen’s injury, Nomlomo explains,” It was a freakish one, It’s around the groin area. I’ll check with the docs what happened there.”

Photo: Lefty Shivambu/Gallo Images

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