RUGBY NEWS - The Vodacom Bulls may have appointed Pote Human as their new Vodacom Super Rugby franchise coach “as an afterthought” but the seasoned coaching veteran believes he will prove his distractors wrong by bringing success back to Loftus Versfeld stadium.
During the entire, prolonged process, Human was probably the least fancied candidate as a consistent stream of media reporting gave the job to many other candidates before settling on former Springbok lock and Supersport pundit Victor Matfield as the main candidate.
But on Tuesday, when the dust settled, it was Human who was appointed as the new Bulls coach, with Matfield nowhere in the picture. Alan Zondagh was confirmed as Director of Rugby, an open secret in the industry for weeks now and the Bulls had finally completed their coaching set-up, with just the management team needing to be finalised in the next few days.
Matfield, who had been touted as the favourite, never made it, withdrawing because of the “insecurity of being a coach” – as Bulls president Willem Strauss put it – although talk is that a performance clause in his contract was perhaps closer to the reason as it painted a pretty big task for the incoming coach in next year’s competition.
Human said he was ready to prove his detractors wrong, and while he is a regular at Loftus, the Bulls performance in last year’s Currie Cup and the fact he has been around the halls of the stadium for so long may make some people a bit nervous about the appointment.
“I’ve coached from schools level, club and under-21s. I was the assistant coach when we won Super Rugby in 2007. I have the experience and people can say what they want. I need to do the world on the field, and the success will show them who is right or wrong,” he said defiantly when posed the question.
