Blue Bulls captain Hanro Liebenberg says he thought only a try would have allowed his side to progress to the final after extra-time in their semi-final loss to Western Province. DYLAN JACK reports.

The visitors, who led 17-15 at half-time, forced extra-time thanks to a try after the hooter from centre Dylan Sage, with flyhalf Manie Libbok missing his touchline conversion to leave the scores level at 32-32.

The regulations state that, should the scores be level after two 10-minute periods of extra-time, the team that has scored the most tries in the semi-final will progress.

The Bulls had outscored Province four tries to two, so if they had managed to keep the scores level, they would have gone through to the final, but there was a mixed reaction from coach and captain as to whether they knew this during the game.

‘We could have gone for the drop goal,’ Liebenberg said. ‘At the end of the day, they told us that if we draw after 20 minutes, Western Province will still be going through due to the log, something like that.

‘I don’t know if that is true, so we were looking for the try to get the win at the end of the day.’

While Liebenberg was not wrong that log position could factor in, it would only have come into effect if both teams had scored the same amount of tries in the match.

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However, Human seemed to disagree with his captain, saying he knew that a penalty would have been enough.

‘We had it like that [that tries would be the difference],’ Human said. ‘We said that with the penalty on the halfway line that they took back.

‘He [Libbok] put one over in training yesterday, so I thought “go for it”. It nearly won the game but unfortunately, it was moved 10m back and [he] could not do it.’

Photo: Ashley Vlotman/Gallo Images