White on the challenges of winning away from home
REACTION: Jake White, director of rugby at the Bulls, underlined the big ask for teams to win away from home in the United Rugby Championship after his side was the only away team that managed to pull off a victory after defeating Zebre 54-29.
No other away team secured a win, so the adage that only South African teams struggle to win overseas, does not hold a lot of water.
Results from this weekend indicates the huge advantage home teams have with Warriors beating Stormers 20-9, Ospreys 19 Sharks 5, Leinster 36 Edinburgh 27, Scarlets 31 Cardiff 25, Munster 45 Dragons 14, Connacht 22 Ulster 20.
Only two teams play on Sunday with the Lions set to face Benetton.
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“Winning anywhere, if you look at results last week, I don’t think an away team won anywhere. So it’s got nothing to do with South African sides coming here. Sides that went from here to Wales and to Ireland lost as well,” White expressed.
“What I mean is, in between the UK, sides also lost. It’s tough to win away from home. We saw last night, the Sharks and the Stormers lost, and that means it is so much more tough to win away from home.
“We don’t have our best player, then it will be tough. Imagine if today we could’ve played RG Snyman, Jason Jenkins, Handre Pollard, Jesse Kriel, Trevor Nyakane, Madosh Tambwe, Ivan van Zyl, Duane Vermeulen – all guys that have been with us the last couple of seasons.
“Imagine if we could run out with those guys every week, I think then the playing fields are level. And we’ve got to try and find a way to get that. If you want to be able to play Leinster with 15 international Bulls.
“We don’t want to be playing Leinster with players that are coming through the ranks to try and make a name for themselves,” White said.
The Bulls repeated their performance against the Italians from earlier in the season when they beat Zebre 78-12 at Ellis Park in April as part of a historic double-header involving South Africa’s two Gauteng-based franchises.
But White was quick to point out that a team like Zebre should not be underestimated.
“To be fair, they [Zebre] scored 36 points against Ulster and 31 points against Osprey so we probably kept them lower with 29 points.
“Not ideal, you never want to leave points, but in saying that, they are a team that can score a lot of points as you’ve seen in the first three weeks.I think people come here and underestimate Zebre at their peril. Zebre are not as poor as everyone thinks they are.
“When they attacked, and they asked questions of our defence, they asked good questions and we had to make good reads.
“Their set-piece, they maul very well, we didn’t give them a maul penalty and we scrummed really well. Because they are a very strong scrum.
“They were in a chance to scrum Ulster to a win, so we obviously focused on our scrum and our maul so I am obviously very happy with that.”
White said he might give the Springboks an extra week off when they finally join the Bulls franchise after their compulsory three week time off.
“Obviously we cannot wait to have that energy of the Springboks. You can imagine coming back from winning a World Cup, the kind of energy and enthusiasm they’ll bring to our squad,” the coach said.
“But what is also nice is the guys that are playing in the positions that those players can play, are also playing really well and that’s always nice as a coach when you’ve got so many more opportunities to sort of change your team around.
“Who knows, maybe we might leave the Boks out. They’ve got a compulsory three week time off, and then, when we get back, they’ll join our squad.
“If we’ve got momentum, I might give them another week off.”
