Dick Muir Quotations

We had been holding our breath that Butch would come through but the knee injury just keeps recurring. We have to plan accordingly.

I can honestly say that we as the coaching staff tried to impress upon the players beforehand that victory was not the most important thing in this first game. In this competition you can get lucky and win here and there, but if you don't start to consistently produce quality high-class performances, then you go nowhere.

Jake and I chatted at length and a compromise has been reached. We have agreed to carefully manage the players (in other words, they will not be run into the ground) and in return there will be no prejudice against them when Jake selects his squad for the end-of-year tour.

I think we all know that their forwards are really physical and enjoy confrontation, but I'd imagine the Bulls are also going to be chasing a bonus-point win and would therefore want to score tries.

I think continuity has been a problem in selection and our cohesion and confidence has suffered.

Our likely team will also not be revealed when we play the Cats the following Wednesday in our final warm-up. Obviously we are going to have a few surprises and we would like to keep those to ourselves.

John will get anything up to a half.

It is desperately frustrating. But we have no choice but to take it on the chin and move on.

I would imagine that 40 points would be the cut-off to make the playoffs and I think we might be a couple of points short.

We have come across footage that confirms the incident.

We are looking at increasing our depth with a few experienced players.

We obviously didn't finish where we would have liked to in the Currie Cup, but we can take lessons out of the season. Maybe in some ways it was good that we were knocked out early, because we don't have a false sense of where we are.

We have given the guys some time off and will only start working with them from November 7.

We've been knocking at the door for a while so it was nice for the door to be opened. But it's going to be a titanic battle because the Hurricanes are a great side.

Tony Brown will make the world of difference for us. He is a clever and very experienced player and you need those qualities in such a key position when you are playing a team as shrewd as the Brumbies.

The Bulls will have a positive approach to the game as well. The less we try tear each other apart and the more rugby we play, the better.

There were some very pleasing performances from the new guys. Some confirmed they might have what it takes, others did not. That is what warm-up games are for. You only really know how good a guy is when you test him in a genuine match situation.

Against Free State we did all the playing, but we did not play correctly. If we play correctly against Western Province, the win will take care of itself. We really do have an exciting side. We are very much looking forward to rectifying matters after last week's little hiccup.

He's in the mould of (retired Blue Bulls No 8) Anton Leonard.

The guys are saying, so what if we're playing a team with 14 All Blacks, and that says a lot about the character of this team.