The Vodacom Bulls beat Ulster Rugby 34-26 in Round 4 of the United Rugby Championship on Saturday, 24 October 2026, and they were hanging on by five points with ten minutes left before a Curwin Bosch penalty on the final play finished it.
A 21-0 lead after half an hour should have been the end of the argument. It was not.
Ulster scored four tries, Jack Murphy converted three of them, and the only reason the Bulls were never caught is that Handré Pollard did not miss a kick all afternoon.
Polly’s Boot Was The Margin
Pollard — Polly to the Loftus crowd — put over four conversions and a penalty for 11 points without a miss from the tee.
The Bulls won by eight. Take the boot out and the arithmetic turns on them completely.
Johan Ackermann made eight changes to his starting pack from the 56-20 Champions Cup win over Stade Français, and Pollard played behind a largely new front five without the kicking ever wobbling.
The First Half Hour Looked Like A Rout
Marcell Coetzee was over inside two minutes. Elrigh Louw followed on 18, and Coetzee scored his second on 32.
Pollard converted all three. Bulls 21, Ulster 0, with ten minutes of the first half still to play.
Chay Mullins then scored on the stroke of half-time and Murphy converted it, and the Bulls walked off 21-7 up with the momentum already gone the other way.
Bulls vs Ulster: Where The Match Turned
David McCann crossed on 45 minutes, converted, and the gap was down to seven.
Coetzee was sin-binned around the 44th minute, which cost the Bulls ten minutes of playing time with fourteen men on the park, and that is the period the Ulster recovery came from.
Pollard’s penalty on 50 steadied it at 24-14.
Johan Grobbelaar’s try on 66, converted by Pollard again, was the fourth of the day for the home side. Four tries earns a try bonus point in the United Rugby Championship, so the Bulls had a fifth log point in the bank at 31-19 whatever happened next.
Stuart McCloskey scored on 70, Murphy converted, and it was 31-26 with the whole of the last ten minutes left for Ulster to find one more.
The Scoring Route
- 2′ — Marcell Coetzee try, Pollard conversion
- 18′ — Elrigh Louw try, Pollard conversion
- 32′ — Marcell Coetzee try, Pollard conversion
- 40′ — Chay Mullins try, Jack Murphy conversion
- Half-time: Bulls 21, Ulster 7
- 44′ — Marcell Coetzee yellow card
- 45′ — David McCann try, Murphy conversion
- 50′ — Pollard penalty
- 66′ — Johan Grobbelaar try, Pollard conversion
- 70′ — Stuart McCloskey try, Murphy conversion
- 80′ — Curwin Bosch penalty
- Full-time: Bulls 34, Ulster 26
Eight Points Was The Number That Mattered
Bosch’s kick on the final play took the margin from five to eight.
At five, Ulster were one try from the match. At eight, with no time left, they were one point outside the seven-point margin that earns a losing bonus in this competition.
So Ulster leave Loftus Versfeld, at roughly 1 300 metres of altitude, with four tries and nothing on the log for them. Four rounds into the 2026/27 season, Richie Murphy’s side have two draws and two defeats and are still waiting for a first win.
Eight of the players they named had been called into the Ireland squad for the upcoming Nations Championship fixtures. They were good enough to score four times away from home and still came away empty.
Coetzee Against His Old Province
Marcell Coetzee captained the Bulls against the club he used to play for, and scored both of their first-half tries.
He also took the yellow card that gave Ulster their way back in, which is the kind of afternoon that says more about a match than the final score does.
The win is a third in a row for the Bulls across all competitions, and the log points stay at Loftus. They will take it. They will also know what the first half hour was worth and what the last forty minutes cost them.
The Team Sheets
Vodacom Bulls: Luan Giliomee; Sebastian de Klerk, Sango Xamlashe, Harold Vorster, Cheswill Jooste; Handré Pollard, Paul de Wet; Gerhard Steenekamp, Johan Grobbelaar, Francois Klopper, Ruan Vermaak, Reinhardt Ludwig, Marcell Coetzee (capt), Hanro Liebenberg, Elrigh Louw.
Ulster Rugby: Jacob Stockdale; Chay Mullins, Jamie Benson, Stuart McCloskey, Michael Lowry; Jack Murphy, Nathan Doak; Tom O’Toole, Tom Stewart (capt), Keynan Knox, Ben Donnell, Cormac Izuchukwu, David McCann, Nick Timoney, Juarno Augustus.
