Exclusive: Phiwe Nomlomo Blends Youth and Experience in Bulls’ 35-Man Currie Cup Squad

Combining U20 players with grizzled Springboks is what excites Bulls Currie Cup coach Phiwe Nomlomo most ahead of this year's campaign which starts on Saturday.

Nomlomo named a 35-man squad this week, which includes six members of the Junior Springboks side that won the U20 World Championship last weekend, as well as 35-year-old former Springbok prop Lizo Gqoboka and 32-year-old former World Cup winner, lock Marvin Orie.

The squad also includes former Scotland international flyhalf Jaco van der Walt and Springbok Sevens star Stedman Gans, both of whom have seen plenty of United Rugby Championship action.

The six players who won gold in the junior world cup in Italy last weekend are hooker Esethu Mnebelele, locks Jaco Grobbelaar and JJ Theron, prop Jean Erasmus, wing Cheswill Jooste and centre Demitre Erasmus.

"In this Currie Cup, I'm excited to see the U20 dreamers, the guys who just have pure ambitions, and the Springboks who have been there and done that, and putting those two groups together on the same field. That gets me excited," Nomlomo, who led the Bulls to the brink of last season's final, told SportsBoom.co.za in an exclusive interview.

"This squad shares one thing and that is that they are all after game time after not really featuring in the URC. So we've been trying to get them moulded together in our pre-season. But it's been fun and we've done things out of the blue, sometimes things that are unusual for rugby players. And so we are all sharing the excitement of starting the campaign against Western Province in Cape Town this weekend."

Swimming confidently

Nomlomo may have been thrown in the deep end last season, being appointed just two weeks before the first round of the Currie Cup, but he did brilliantly to get the Bulls to finish second on the round-robin log and then they were agonisingly close to reaching the final.

But their semifinal finished 40-40 after extra time and the Sharks, the eventual champions, went through based on scoring more tries.

This year Nomlomo is swimming confidently, even though there has been more coaching uncertainty at Loftus Versfeld following the axing of Jake White on July 4. 

Former Lions coach Johan Ackermann, who led the Bulls' neighbours to the Currie Cup title in an unbeaten 2015 season, was appointed last week to replace White.

Ackermann was a consultant for the trophy-winning Junior Springboks in Italy and only arrived at Loftus Versfeld this week. So he and Nomlomo have had nothing more than a cursory chat, but the Currie Cup coach is unfazed.

"I had a chat earlier with Johan, it wasn't an in-depth chat, but I got the guidelines. We have a plan for the Currie Cup, although that may become another plan as he becomes more settled," Nomlomo said.

"In the Currie Cup, you never know what you're going to be dealt. But we have enough drivers and leaders on the field and they all have our trust to make the right decisions."

"There's always going to be some overlap with the URC team because they don't have any warm-up games, and they have players going to the Springboks. So the Currie Cup coach has to be super-tight with the URC coach."

Cycling through

Nomlomo will have to juggle his resources anyway, with the Bulls already announcing that their 32 top players will not initially take part in the Currie Cup, but have instead started their pre-season training for the URC. 

Some of the players ranked 33-55 are cycling through a schedule that has seen them play in the 2024 Currie Cup, be involved in the 2024/25 URC and are now again playing in the Currie Cup.

"The guys are still training with the main squad even if they're not playing much URC, so they have cycled through a Currie Cup into the URC and now into another Currie Cup. So they have the same training time on their feet as the senior squad, they do the same gym and the same travel," Nomlomo explained.

"So we have to rotate, if we don't then we're going to be caught out like we were last year. We had hideous injuries in 2024, it was two guys a game on average, that was the attrition rate. So ensuring we have enough depth is going to be our biggest challenge and it's why I named a 35-man squad, including some club players."

"We have to be smart and it's going to be all about how we balance the team. We mustn't burn our fuel too early, we have to leave enough to kick on at the end of the competition," Nomlomo said.

Franchises and SA Cup teams

South Africa's four URC franchises - the Bulls, Sharks, Stormers (Western Province) and Lions - are joined in the Currie Cup by the top four sides from the recently-completed SA Cup: the Mpumalanga Pumas, Griquas, Free State Cheetahs and Boland Cavaliers.

And Nomlomo reckons those last four teams, settled and still relatively fresh, will be dangerous in the Currie Cup Premier Division.

"You can't look past the SA Cup teams, matches against them are going to be fiercely contested. And you look at what Jimmy Stonehouse [coach] is doing with the Pumas in Nelspruit and it's incredible. He has three teams of quality that he can use at any stage. The fact that he has attracted Willie Engelbrecht back from the Stormers says it all and they will play with a lot of width," Nomlomo cautioned.