Bulls boss Jake White has confirmed that Kurt-Lee Arendse won’t feature for them again this season, while admitting that he’s none too pleased about it.
The Bulls are mounting a strong finish to their URC campaign and look set to secure second place on the table, ensuring a home semi-final, but Arendse won’t be joining the party.
The Bok winger is currently plying his trade with Japanese club Mitsubishi Dynaboars, and while there were initial hopes that he would be able to return for the URC playoffs, that is no longer the case as the Dynoboars are set to be involved in a relegation battle at the end of the season.
Arendse joined the Dynaboars on a short-term deal but is still contracted to the Bulls franchise.
Asked about speedster’s availability, White said: “I think the horse has bolted, there was a cut-off date and he won’t be back to play for us.”
After being asked about the lack of Bulls backs featuring at the top of the statistics in the United Rugby Championship, which was not the case last season, White pointed to Arendse’s absence and said that these kinds of deals were “very bad” for South African rugby.
“Those stats have changed because Kurt-Lee is overseas,” White said.
“It’s not good for South African rugby that the best players who make the line-breaks are playing all over the world and not for our franchises. It’s a very bad thing.
“You build a guy and bring him to the club and make him who he is and then you don’t have the luxury of having him when you need him the most and at the best time of his career.
“Unfortunately, that’s going to happen more and more, and it’s not something that I’m ever going to say ‘ah well, let it be.’
“It’s very sad that we get to a stage where we talk about bringing players through, but our job is not about finding youngsters, paying their school fees by putting them in big games and then selling them or handing them over to other clubs to become rockstars. We are not in that industry.
“We are in coaching, we are in a country where winning and rugby are important. There is no good in that comment that the stats are different, the player that we had who used to do all those things isn’t here and that’s not through our design.”
