The Isuzu Bulls Daisies have set the standard in Pick n Pay Women’s Super League rugby for so long that the real challenge now is not winning, it is staying hungry. That is the question sitting squarely on the desk of head coach Zenay Jordaan as her side prepares to open its season against South Africa A this Saturday.
Jordaan, who won 36 caps for the Springboks before moving into coaching, has stepped up from co-head to sole head coach, and with that shift has come a deliberate rebuild of how the squad spends its days. Caught between off season and pre-season, she has restructured training to put conditioning first.
“We wanted to actually focus more on the conditioning part, and to get that right we decided to go mornings and then have our team sessions in the afternoon, just to see how the players can handle the type of load that we put on them,” she said.
It is a philosophy built on restraint rather than reinvention. As one of only a handful of Level 3 qualified coaches in the women’s game, Jordaan could easily overhaul the programme in her own image. Instead, she has chosen a lighter touch.
“At this point, as a coach, I don’t want to change too much,” she said. “What I’ve learned with the ladies is less is more, not to make it too complicated for the team, but also not moving too far away from what they’ve already learned with the previous coach, while also bringing my style and flavour into it. It was a bit challenging at the beginning to get rid of old habits and install new ones, but repetition with the ladies was one of the most key components.”
With a squad stripped of several stars on Springbok duty, Jordaan has leaned hard on her strength and conditioning staff to manage load and keep the group fresh for both club and country.
“Conditioning plays a big part for us. The better we get players to execute skills and think under pressure when they’re fatigued, the more we hold onto our basics,” she said. “Laying that foundation first was major before we moved into our systems on attack and defence.”
The national call-ups sting, she admits, but they have also forced a deeper look at the club pipeline feeding the squad.
There’s also a lot of talent out there, and it’s helped us a lot to go and look at some club games,” she said. “We still have contracted players on the side, putting in their work, and we make sure we keep the squad deep even though our top players are away.”
That depth will be tested in public for the first time at Loftus Versfeld this weekend, with a handful of emerging players given their shot against South Africa A.
“There’s quite a few of them, and they’ve put up their hands in training already,” Jordaan said. “Now it’s just putting it together in the game. This is an amazing opportunity for these players, and for us to see where we’re at in terms of our planning, what we need to get right, and what’s already working.”
Jordaan wants her side to play with width and ambition, but not at the expense of the set piece platform that has underpinned the Daisies’ dominance.
“It’s just repetition, and having constant check-ins with players on where their detail is at,” she said of balancing the two. “It might be a bit expensive at the start, but when everything ties in, it comes down to the basics.”
She is equally clear-eyed about the modern game’s lack of secrets, with every side now analysing opposition footage in detail.
“It’s sometimes difficult when you don’t have footage and you just plan, but I believe it’s important to stick to our processes,” she said. “We’ve got blocks in terms of what we want to do, and if we break it down in the first 10 to 20 minutes, we see if it’s working. From there, if there needs to be a change, we make it. But it starts at training, getting the ladies as game ready as possible.”
Success brings its own danger, and Jordaan is alert to the risk of a squad that has won so much starting to coast.
“That’s where a bit of competition comes in,” she said. “Not just mind games to tickle them a little, but putting them under pressure in competitive positions. If we see a player becoming complacent, we have one on ones to make sure she stays alive and keeps competing, even if there isn’t an obvious reserve in that position. You make it clear you can’t get complacent within this environment.”
Accountability runs through everything, right down to homework assignments built around video review.
“I always stress detail,” she said. “We try to pull as much information from the players themselves, but I also encourage them to do the extra work to get better in specific areas. I expect video footage where I can see they’re actually working on it.”
Jordaan is candid about what it means to lead a team at the front of a genuinely growing sport. Women’s rugby, alongside women’s football and cricket, is drawing bigger crowds and more curiosity than ever, and she is determined the Isuzu Bulls Daisies do not just win but keep setting the benchmark for what professionalism in the women’s game looks like.
“We try to keep the excitement going. We stress that we are a high performance team in a high performance environment,” she said. “We encourage our players to keep growing, not just as athletes, but as human beings too, because sometimes we miss that part.”
As for what spectators can expect this season, Jordaan is not promising predictability.
“Some good, exciting rugby. We definitely won’t be a team that’s predictable,” she said. “We’ll always try to keep it interesting, without changing too much of what works. But yeah, we’ve got a lot of surprises.”
The team will also soon have to do it without one of their most influential playmakers, Jakkie Cilliers, who is departing to test herself in women’s rugby overseas, a loss Jordaan feels deeply even as she backs the move.
“It’s immense, what her contribution has been. It’s sad to lose a player like her, but we can’t hold back someone who wants to spread her wings,” Jordaan said. “We’ll definitely feel her absence, we already can. But it’s a great opportunity for her to go and see what the game looks like on the other side of the world.”
Nearly a decade removed from her own playing career, Jordaan still feels rugby’s tug, even if one part of it she is happy to have left behind.
“I do miss playing, yes. I just don’t miss the conditioning,” she laughed. “Sometimes I get stuck in there with the girls just to shake off that eagerness. I still miss the game a lot, but I couldn’t have found a better way to give back, to serve and contribute to the youngsters coming through.”
For now, her focus is squarely on Saturday, and on finding out exactly how much of the last two months of work has actually stuck.
“I just want to see what we’ve been working on for the past two months,” she said. “How the girls implement it, and how they cope under physical pressure. At training we don’t really get those pressure moments. Out there, we’ll see it for real.”
The match, to be played on the Loftus B field, will take place at 12 noon on Saturday.
