Stompie Olivier het as 11-jarige sy eerste melkbeesstoetery bedryf. Vandag, hier naby Ventersdorp in Noordwes, spog hy met die Hotspot-beeste: ‘n Boran- en Droughtmaster-stoetery. Die droë saaiseisoen vanjaar was egter ‘n kopseer.
Kom kuier saam, Dinsdag om 18:00 net op VIA, en moenie Landbouweekliks hierdie week misloop nie!
Jaco Pieterse boer naby Richmond in die Noord-Kaap. Hierdie provinsiale Jongboer van die Jaar se sin vir besigheid gee hom skaalvoordele, veral op huurgrond, soos hy integrasie in die skaapwaardeketting benut. En stagneer vorm nie deel van sy mondering nie.
Kom kuier saam, Dinsdag om 18:00 net op VIA, en moenie Landbouweekliks hierdie week misloop nie!
Vodacom Bulls flyhalf Chris Smith has added his name to the Vodacom United Rugby Championship Awards roll of honour by collecting the Gilbert Golden Boot prize for the 2023/24 season.
Smith is amongst two other winners, Alessandro Izekor who takes this season’s Tackle Machine and Jamie Ritchie who is the season’s Turnover King.
The trio become the first award winners of the 2023/24 season as the VURC rolls out the red carpet ahead of the semi-finals, with the OFX Top Try Scorer, Ironman, Try of the Season powered by URC.tv, Next-Gen Player of the Season, Elite XV, and Elixirr Innovation Award winners all set to be announced this week.
The final three awards – the Vodacom URC Player of the Season, BKT Coach of the Season, and the Player’s Player of the Season, will all be announced next week ahead of the Grand Final.
But first, here is a closer look at today’s three winners.
GILBERT GOLDEN BOOT: Chris Smith (Vodacom Bulls) 30 kicks, 90% accuracy
The Gilbert Golden Boot is awarded in recognition of the most accurate place-kicker, with all kickers who have attempted a minimum of 30 ranked by their success percentage.
Smith wins the award with 30 successful kicks, and an accuracy of 90%.
Ulster’s John Cooney wasn’t far behind him with 49 kicks and an accuracy of 88%, with Leinster’ Ross Byrne coming in third with an accuracy of 87% from his 31 successful kicks.
Other winners include…
TACKLE MACHINE: Alessandro Izekor (Benetton Rugby) – 188 tackles, 98% accuracy
This award is given to the player who boasts the best tackle success rate among those who have attempted 150 or more over the course of the campaign.
Izekor takes home the prize having made 188 tackles at a success rate of 98%.
The 24-year-old edged out DHL Stormers lock Ruben van Heerden, who made 224 tackles in the URC this season with a tackle accuracy of 97%. Scarlets lock Alex Craig finishes in third place with 199 tackles, and a tackle accuracy of 96%.
TURNOVER KING: Jamie Ritchie (Edinburgh Rugby) – 22 turnovers
This is awarded to the player who has won the most turnovers during the regular season.
Ritchie wins the award convincingly with 22, four ahead of Connacht’s Shamus Hurley-Langton, who finished in second place with 18, and five ahead of third-placed JC Pretorius of the Emirates Lions, who made 17 turnovers.
Be sure to follow all the VURC Awards announcements using the hashtag #URCAwards
VURC Awards Winners 2023-24
Tackle Machine: Alessandro Izekor (Benetton Rugby)
Turnover King: Jamie Ritchie (Edinburgh Rugby)
Gilbert Golden Boot: Chris Smith (Vodacom Bulls)
There will be several historic firsts as the latest edition of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship transitions from a spellbinding league finish into a Finals Series on Friday that will have wider appeal from a geographical viewpoint than ever before.
For the first time, all five participating nations will feature in the eight-team Quarter-Final phase, with the Welsh getting their first representation in this phase of the competition since it morphed from being the PRO14 into the VURC three seasons ago.
With Benetton beating Edinburgh last week in what was effectively a Play-Off game, Italy will also be featuring in a VURC Play-Off for the first time. Although the cross-hemisphere nature of the competition made it unique, in the first two seasons only three nations were represented in the playoffs.
In the first season, there were three South African teams, three Irish teams, and two Scottish teams, whereas last year there were four Irish teams, three South Africans and the sole Scottish representative, the Glasgow Warriors. This year the national representation is three from Ireland, two from South Africa (the Hollywoodbets Sharks drop out), and one each from Scotland, Italy, and Wales.
The Welsh representatives, the Ospreys, snuck into the last eight by a whisker, with their bonus point win over Cardiff in their last regular season game enough to break the hearts of the Emirates Lions, who’d moved into the playoff bracket courtesy of a losing bonus point against the DHL Stormers in their final match in Cape Town.
It makes sense that having a Welsh team in the Quarter-Final phase adds Welsh eyes to the viewership and ditto Italy. URC chief executive Martin Anayi is particularly excited about the Welsh presence as he remembers what success did for Welsh interest when the Scarlets won what was at that point the PRO12 in the 2016/17 season.
“We definitely saw when the Scarlets were winning the league that attendances were up,” said Anayi.
“The Welsh audience wants to support a winning team. When we had Scarlets winning the league we were in pretty good shape in Wales and Ospreys are the side ranked second with league wins. We had good audiences through those years so success is a good driver in URC with Welsh teams.
“Hopefully the teams are going to be strong in the next couple of years and we will see that bounce back. The interest hasn’t actually diminished in Wales, it’s still growing. It’s just not growing as fast in the other countries, it is our job to increase that.”
With all the teams in Wales looking youthful and therefore promising for the future as Welsh rugby goes through a generational changing of the guard, Anayi has reason to be optimistic.
The prospects of the Welsh interest extending into the semi-final phase though aren’t great in the short term, as the Ospreys’ eighth-placed finish sends them to champions and log winners Munster for Friday night’s opening game in Limerick.
It has been such a competitive season in the VURC though that no one will be writing the Ospreys off. They beat the Stormers in Cape Town, the only team to win at the DHL Stormers’ home ground in the competition this season and only the second team to win there since 2021.
The theory is that if they can win at DHL Stadium, they can win anywhere, including Thomond Park.
The DHL Stormers, who haven’t had the stars align for them quite as much as they did in the previous two seasons, will be hoping that alignment can start happening again with an Ospreys win against Munster as they would then be in line to host a semi-final in Cape Town as they are seeded higher than the Ospreys and are in the same side of the Finals Series draw.
First though the Stormers would have to score their first-ever win at the Glasgow Warriors’ home ground of the Scotstoun in one of two games on Saturday that rival each other for the status of plum fixture of the quarterfinal round. The other is the match that takes place just before that in Dublin between Leinster and Ulster.
In previous years it would have been unheard of for the two Irish provinces, who have been in the top three in each of the two URC seasons, to be pitted against one another this early in the playoffs. But that is the kind of season it has been, with lots of unexpected results, and Leinster have fallen off their perch of the previous seasons to drop to third, while Ulster finished sixth.
The recent match in Belfast between the two sides, won by Ulster in dramatic style with a long-range last-gasp penalty kick, was a high-quality exhibition of rugby and perfectly showcased just how strong Irish rugby is currently. Leinster will start as favourites at the AVIVA Stadium but Ulster will be buoyed by the knowledge that they have beaten their rivals twice this season.
The pressure in this game should squarely be on Leinster given that they lost narrowly in the Investec Champions Cup final for the third successive year and really need to win the URC to get some form of silverware out of the season.
Leinster were knocked out by the Bulls in the semi-final stage in the inaugural season and by Munster last year and will be driven to reclaim the champion status they enjoyed for most of the final PRO14 years.
A rematch with the Bulls, this time at Loftus, is on the cards if they do win, as that is where they will have to go if they win and the Bulls win against Benetton. The Bulls will start as strong favourites against the Italian team as they won comfortably when the two teams played a league game at Loftus a few weeks ago, but as any coach or player will tell you, a playoff is different.
Whereas Benetton were on a two-match tour when they were in Pretoria in May, and had hit their target by beating the Sharks the week before, this time it is a one off and they will be seeking a win rather than a consolation albeit ultimately important bonus point as was the case last time.
Maclear in die Oos-Kaap is bergagtig en Delwyn Roberts ken dit al te goed. Selfs 4x4s sukkel en brandslaan word te voet gedoen. Delwyn se hart lê by sy beeste… eerste die Brangus, en dan die Charolais, beide wat kommersieel en as stoeterye bedryf word.
Kom kuier saam, Dinsdag om 18:00 net op VIA, en moenie Landbouweekliks hierdie week misloop nie!
Chris Smith will notch up his 50th Vodacom United Rugby Championship cap when his team runs out for round 18 of the 2023/24 season on Saturday 1 June at the Hollywoodbets Kings Park Stadium, in Durban.
Jake White has retained the same 23-men Vodacom Bulls side that did duty in round 17 of the competition, with just the positional change in Johan Grobbelaar coming into the starting XV whilst Akker van der Merwe shifts to the six-three split impact squad. Van der Merwe will be alongside Simphiwe Matanzima, Francois Klopper, Reinhardt Ludwig, Nizaam Carr, Keagan Johannes, Chris Smith and Sebastian de Klerk.
Grobbelaar will partner up with Gerhard Steenekamp and Wilco Louw at the front with Ruan Vermaak and his namesake and captain, Ruan Nortje at lock. Behind Ruan partnership will be Marco van Staden and Elrigh Louw at blind and open side flank, respectively.
The tested pairing of Embrose Papier (scrumhalf) and Johan Goosen (flyhalf) will link up at halfback once more. Behind them will be the synchronised backline of Harold Vorster and David Kriel at centre and the back trio of Kurt-Lee Arendse, Canan Moodie and Willie le Roux.
Victory in Durban for the Tshwane outfit will see them lift the SA Shield and the best opportunity to finish in the top two ahead of the knockout stages of the competition, which would see them host both the Quarterfinal and the subsequent semi-finals at Loftus Versfeld. Jake White’s herd will also learn who they will face in the Quarters after the completion of the weekend’s fixtures. Tickets for the weekend of 07/08 June 2024 match are already on sale via Ticketpro
VODACOM BULLS vs HOLLYWOODBETS SHARKS STARTING XV: 1. Gerhard Steenekamp, 2. Johan Grobbelaar, 3. Wilco Louw, 4. Ruan Vermaak, 5. Ruan Nortje (c), 6. Marco van Staden, 7. Elrigh Louw, 8. Cameron Hanekom, 9. Embrose Papier, 10. Johan Goosen, 11. Kurt-Lee Arendse, 12. Harold Vorster, 13. David Kriel, 14. Canan Moodie, 15. Willie Le Roux
VODACOM BULLS IMPACT SQUAD: 16. Akker van der Merwe, 17. Simphiwe Matanzima, 18. Francois Klopper, 19. Reinhardt Ludwig, 20. Nizaam Carr, 21. Keagan Johannes, 22. Chris Smith, 23. Sebastian de Klerk
MANAGEMENT: Jake White – Director of Rugby, Chris Rossouw – Assistant Coach, Werner Kruger – Assistant Coach, Gary Gold – Assistant Coach, Andries Bekker – Assistant Coach, Jean Tiedt – Assistant Coach, Kennedy Tsimba – Assistant Coach, Phiwe Nomlomo – Assistant Coach, John-William Meyer – Technical Analyst, Dr. Herman Rossouw – Team Doctor, Lance Lammetjies – Physiotherapist, Darryn Berry – Physiotherapist, Andre Volsteedt – Strength & Conditioning, Yusuf Vahed – Sport Scientist, Elias Bennett – Team Manager, Simon Dyidi – Logistics Manager
Jan-Hendrik Kleyn boer op Mooifontein buite Colesberg in die Noord-Kaap. Hierdie is skaapwêreld, en om in die Karoo te boer, sit nie in elke ou se broek nie. Daarom volg Jan-Hendrik ‘n holistiese benadering met sy water- en veldbestuur.
Kom kuier saam, Dinsdag om 18:00 net op VIA, en moenie Landbouweekliks hierdie week misloop nie!