Supersport's Brendan Nel believes the Blue Bulls pulled of a massive coup this past week when they extended the contracts of two of the hottest prospects in South African rugby.
"The press release filtered through almost unnoticed – in fact two of them – as they last week announced the signature of lock Flip van der Merwe until the end of the 2012 season and this week added the signature of Mthunzi “Fudge” Mabeta to that list – the latter also committing himself until 2012.
"Now I can see the cynics point out that the two have chosen a dead end street as the Bulls already have three Springbok locks in Victor Matfield, Bakkies Botha and Danie Rossouw. So why would any up and coming lock commit himself to a province where he has virtually no guarantee of good game time in the next year?
"I posed that question to Van der Merwe just before he left with the team to New Zealand and before he had signed on again for a further two years. In his deep booming voice, the gentle giant had a simple answer: “I want to become the best lock I can and where better to do that than under the best locks in the world. I’m learning so much from them that I can only benefit from it.”
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