Clyde’s comeback reflects on Jake’s genius
11 Feb 2013
Jake White is a better coach now than when he won the World Cup in 2007. He is also the inspiration in Clyde Rathbone’s comeback.
White has always been a bloody good rugby coach, but as a young coach schooled in the South African system it meant White’s rugby education was as much about player pedigree as it was about coach’s paranoia.
South Africa is a wicked rugby system in that it is never as simple as a good coach coaches a good team. There are so many political agendas and I am not referring to race. School affiliation plays its part, north versus south has always been bigger than white versus black and English versus Afrikaans has always been more of a soul destroyer where it should be a a unifier of something stronger when two cultures combine for the purpose of one result.
White, born and raised Afrikaans, started his schooling as Jakobus Westerduim and finished it adopted to an English step father as the teenager Jake White. If anyone would be vulnerable to paranoia or bouts of insecurity then he, through no doing of his own, was a prime candidate.
His coaching career has been one of success but equally one of alienation as he has sought to convince the world of his identity and quality as being the best. It obviously goes deeper than rugby but White, in South Africa, was the victim of politics as much as he was taught to use the politics within rugby to further his own case.
White always wanted to be just a rugby coach and he wanted to be judged just as a rugby coach, but he also wanted comfort of how good he was as this coach. He felt victimised. He never felt he got his dues. He was never considered a candidate for the national coaching job but never doubted he was the best for the job.
When he won the game’s greatest prize he could not focus on the prize but was repulsed that those who had spurned him were self acclaimed saviours for appointing him. Those who wanted him to fail were preaching of how they made him succeed.
He had to leave South Africa to find the reason he loved the game. He had to coach rugby again and find joy from creating and not being accused of being the beneficiary of an already made creation.
When White got the Bok job in 2004 he initially flourished, then fell as all the paranoia and politics set in, and then he soared as he applied his mind to coaching a team, embracing expertise in the form of Eddie Jones and allowing the collective to be stronger than the insecurity of one individual.
White was brilliant in the Boks’ 2007 World Cup campaign, in his planning, in his squad selection and in his match 22 selections. If you like or dislike him it is difficult to counter his contribution. He is the first to put Eddie Jones on a pedestal but Eddie’s role, by his own admission, was secondary to what White had already put in place.
White, though, was never content in South Africa, even as a World Cup winner because there was too much pain associated with prejudice as far as he was concerned. He was always in confrontation and because of his nature he sought the confrontation as a means of fronting his opinion on South African rugby.
Some would describe him a rugby political animal, but the real man just wants to be the best rugby coach. Canberra, and the Brumbies, has allowed White to be the coach and rugby to be the game. In South Africa White was as much political pawn as he may have thought he was a political pioneer.
I am thrilled for him at what he has achieved with the Brumbies. He has special qualities as a coach and one of them is his loyalty to players. Those who he invests in respond and he has a whisperer’s touch when it comes to taking the wounded in something special and finding the wonder in that same individual.
We saw it with Percy Montgomery and Os du Randt with the Springboks and we are now seeing it with Clyde Rathbone. White has always believed Rathbone to be special, as a player and a person. He made him the SA under 21 captain in the year he coached the baby Boks to a world championship.
Rathbone chose an international career in Australia and made telling scoring contributions against White’s senior Boks, but Rathbone succumbed to a combination of injury and depression and his career ended with a crash. He retired three seasons ago but a year in White’s company also proved motivation enough that a return was possible.
White has made Rathbone believe again and Canberra and the Brumbies have made White belief that it is about the player, the game and that the result is not always the one on the scoreboard. Giving Rathbone hope and resurrecting life into the Brumbies will define White’s perceived status as much as winning a World Cup with the Springboks. What he has done in Canberra, as a man who can inspire, define him even more than what he did as a coach in Paris in 2007.
By Mark Keohane
86 Comments
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11 Feb 2013, 12:20 pm
Wow…arse-creeping dragon….
Be on the lookout for a Jake White column in the near future…
11 Feb 2013, 12:26 pm
How do you undermine yourself?
Well, firstly write a gargantuan (and terribly boring) article judging people who accept mediocre results as an excuse for ‘building for the World Cup’…
Then follow that up, by blowing smoke up the arse of the architect of the above system, who was actually crucified a few months prior, by the selfsame author of both articles as having no principle…
Is that right Dr. Jeckyll? or should I perhaps call you Mr. Hyde Keo?
11 Feb 2013, 12:27 pm
Nice article Mark. I’ve avoided coming to this site in recent months because of the negativity and bile that seems be accepted as intelligent discussion here. However, your tweet drew me back because of my interest in Jake and Clyde. Just wanted to say thanks and well done on an insightful and thoughtful article. I won’t be hanging around to cop abuse from people who disagree with me. Thanks again.
11 Feb 2013, 12:28 pm
What he did with that no name Brumbies side last year is nothing short of incredible.
They were 1 win away from being the only Aussie side in the top 6. Amazing result if you think of the quality names in the Reds and Waratah sides.
11 Feb 2013, 12:28 pm
Always was a good coach, some dicy selections though.
eddie andrews?
Dropping Victor for Gerrie Britz because of a perceived “attitude” problem. When every hooker in the game just kakked their brook at the sight of big Vic.
11 Feb 2013, 12:32 pm
@John Galt-4: What counts is their sophomore year… ask any team, artist, entrepreneur… year one is worth nothing if you can’t follow it up…
11 Feb 2013, 12:37 pm
Jake was an arrogant twit who should have been sacked leading up to that WC. His record was piss poor leading up to the WC. What saved Jake, was Eddie Jones and a great squad of players.
Jake has achieved nothing with the Brumbies to date, hell they never made the top 6 and the excuse that he had a new squad applied to most of the sides.
Jake was an average coach at best, with a massive ego
11 Feb 2013, 12:47 pm
“White has made Rathbone belief again and Canberra and the Brumbies have made White belief that it is ….”
I don’t want to get too technical keo, but shouldn’t that be “believe”
11 Feb 2013, 12:54 pm
At the end of the day JW is a damn good coach and a winner and a born Lion. He took the core of his u21 world champion team and brought Bill home I’m 2007. He then left the clown with 13 world champion players to take to RWC 2011, only for the clown to get his teeth kicked in at the quarter finals.
Jake when you are finished with those hardy horses come home to Lions country. We will need sons of Lions to restore our pride and win the superrugby trophy’
11 Feb 2013, 12:58 pm
Hater will hate I suppose.
Jake did what he said he would do. His challenges however were no different than those of any other Bok coaches including Meyer. It is funny how any coach in Bok rugby’s history at some stage goes into a phase of absolute paranoia…
I don’t think I will ever see the day a Bok coach lasts two terms.
11 Feb 2013, 12:59 pm
Always been a White fan and always will be. Jake is an astute scholar of the game and ranks as one of the best alongside Woodward and Grumpy Henry.
What’s scary is how he keeps getting better.
11 Feb 2013, 13:06 pm
@PissAnt-10: well if Heyneke loses in the final, semi or the quarters, he may just be given one more 4 year term. Like Ted was. Only we need to get ref to pin all the blame on and write an official document blaming that sukka.
11 Feb 2013, 13:20 pm
Keo, I have not bothered to post for a pretty long time (over one year). However this is the best bit of writing from you for ever so long a time. I trust that we are seeing a real comeback – and sincerely hope that we will have more of the same!
And yes, Jake White had made many mistakes when coaching the Boks – albeit in an incredibly difficult milieu. But he is finally free to do his own thing (as indeed we saw from him in his SAcan provincial coaching career) – and he is doing very well at it in Australia. Long may that continue. As an adage,:Jake made a very wise, though last-minute decision to mend his then over-channeled views (all defense and no flair or wide attack) and brought in Eddie Jones to add an attacking dimension to the back-line, at no 99.9 just prior tot he World Cup.
The rest, of course, is history – let us HOPE that Meyer learns from that and hastily abandons the one-track approach that he has exhibited so far….
[As a matter of interest: It would be worthwhile to make a comparison between the early provincial careers of Jake White and Heyneke Meyer, for they are remarkably similar: Both went from exceptional and daring, even "experimental," creative thinkers to adopting a safer defensive, kick-and-chase and predominantly forward-oriented game. The point being that White eventually, though belatedly, checked himself and reformed. Meyer still needs to developed that ability....
What truly concerns me is that it appears that Meyer got trapped (arrested...?) in his approach due to the failure of his stint in England (Leicester was truly a disaster - and I was coaching in the UK at the time) - which is also the point at which his career diverged significantly from that of White. We shall just have to wait and see if Meyer matures to a position where he is capable of harnessing the superb players that SA has, including in the wider channels...!]
11 Feb 2013, 13:21 pm
@Saffex-7:
“Jake was an average coach at best”
Wow, just wow. Winning an age level world championship, a Tri Nations title, a World Cup and almost getting a Brumbies squad with two or three name players into play-off contention during your first season makes you an average coach?
I wish we had more average coaches in this country of ours.
11 Feb 2013, 13:21 pm
@corms-3:
Nice comment, couldn’t agree more.
11 Feb 2013, 13:23 pm
@PissAnt-10:
“It is funny how any coach in Bok rugby’s history at some stage goes into a phase of absolute paranoia”.
Makes you think about what goes on behind the scenes from the administrator side that cause these guys to act all paranoid.
11 Feb 2013, 13:28 pm
Good read Keo. Glad you got your mojo back, you’re always at your best when you’re playing the media game.
Just a small correction or query though.
Rathbone came back from depression without help from White, it was only after Clyde recovered that Jake approached him to play again.
So for me it’s more of reflection of Rathbone’s character than any act of genius by White.
11 Feb 2013, 13:29 pm
@cyberscamp-13:
Good analysis.
11 Feb 2013, 13:30 pm
If Heyneke Meyer doens’t realise soon that the game has moved on an the ball is now kept alive (even England and Italy are now off-loading the in the tackle – and we already Argentina moving towards that type of game), he will end up making White look an ever better coach once NZ and Oz run all over us again.
As to Rathbone, depression is a serious illness and we should never make light of it. I do wonder though how he felt seeing about 10 or 12 of his u/21 team standing on the podium in Paris in 2007.
11 Feb 2013, 13:35 pm
not the biggest jake white fan but no one can take away his achievement…
he is a world cup winning coach…
and you are…???
yeah… agree with comments above… good article keo…
more like this and the jk blues and plentsch people will be coming back and sticking around…
@corms-3:
stick around bud…
11 Feb 2013, 13:40 pm
@corms-3: Well said.
11 Feb 2013, 13:44 pm
Yassis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYRRAvi3cpw&feature=share
11 Feb 2013, 13:46 pm
@keocoza Agree about his coaching, but Rathbone return remains to be seen. Isn’t it just a case of “the one that got away” for White?
11 Feb 2013, 13:49 pm
@John Galt-22:
Tank Tweeted me that early this morning, eish it is cringe worthy.
11 Feb 2013, 13:51 pm
Excellent article Keo,
Sadly you will get bashed no doubt, Just as Jake will,
11 Feb 2013, 13:52 pm
The Boks’ record for 2006-2007 is poor, nothing to brag about
Beating the Poms twice in the RWC was nice but it didn’t make JW a great coach, it’s only Edi Jones coaching and Percy’s boots which saved the day.
Still light years better than PdV
11 Feb 2013, 13:55 pm
@CharlesM-8: my eyes fail me again on the subbing process. Thanks for being the revise sub.
11 Feb 2013, 13:56 pm
I am glad for Rathbone .Depression is a terrible affliction and to play top level rugby again is a testament to his character .Jake deserves the credit as well in giving him the opportunity and convincing him that he can still contribute at that level of the game .
11 Feb 2013, 13:57 pm
“White has made Rathbone belief again and Canberra and the Brumbies have made White belief that it is about the player, the game and that the result is not always the one on the scoreboard.”
BELIEVE not BELIEF
11 Feb 2013, 13:57 pm
@Hondo-25: Didn’t PDivvy get wins in NZ? Two of them in fact. And Jake got how many? Pdivvy went unbeaten against England, White didn’t manage that. And White never won in Dublin.
Of course PDivvy did mange a loss in Scotland.
11 Feb 2013, 13:59 pm
Breaking news:
The Sharks have lost Keegan Daniel and Tim Whitehead to long-term injuries.
11 Feb 2013, 14:00 pm
Let’s not forget that what you saw in the Brumbies last season would have been partially attributed to what White had learnt in his time coaching the Boks and his dealings with specialists. I believe he’s more rounded now than he was back then. Before his time as Bok head coach he’d never even head-coached at CC or S15 level.
11 Feb 2013, 14:01 pm
@wpstormerbok-17: agree totally. I don’t mean for it come across as Clyde is only back cos of Jake. Clyde’s comeback to life was his victory. Jake recognised that comeback and has harnessed it into him playing at the level he is again. I am applauding Jake’s ability to recognise that quality in players deemed too old, too injured or too damaged.
11 Feb 2013, 14:02 pm
@willievz-30: thanks will follow up
11 Feb 2013, 14:02 pm
@willievz-30:
Not really breaking news.
How long are they each out for?
They were both seeing specialists today.
11 Feb 2013, 14:02 pm
No fan of Jake but that win against England in the pool match was one of the best games I ever saw
11 Feb 2013, 14:08 pm
@John Galt-34:
Daniel – 6 weeks (knee ligaments)
Whitehead – 6-8 weeks (broken arm)
11 Feb 2013, 14:13 pm
@willievz-36:
Great , i would rather face Meyer Bosman or Botes than those two
11 Feb 2013, 14:13 pm
@keo-32:
You actually replied.
As they say around here
Kudo’s
11 Feb 2013, 14:15 pm
Would take White as Cheetahs coach in a heartbeat. Unlikely to ever happen though.
11 Feb 2013, 14:17 pm
@willievz-30: so Bissy with captain the guppies this season – whayt a sight that will be
11 Feb 2013, 14:20 pm
@RL-40: Frans Steyn?
In any case, it will be an Afrikaner.
Will go down well with HG
11 Feb 2013, 14:27 pm
@willievz-42: Bissy was the official vice captain last year. I think Steyn was just filling in as Bissy was injured. Anyway as skipper he can basically get away with murder at the breakdown point ala McCheat style and not be penalised. He must remember not to say pale to the ref when he points to the sticks
11 Feb 2013, 14:41 pm
“has always been more of a soul destroyer where it should be a a unifier of something stronger when two cultures combine for the purpose of one result”
It always annoys me to see statements like this. There is absolutely no basis for this. Diversity is never a strength. At best it doesn’t cause disruption. Usually it creates internal divisions that lead to inefficiency, overhead and infighting.
A homogeneous, unified populace is always stronger than a fractured, diverse group that is constantly working against each other.
11 Feb 2013, 15:18 pm
jeez i just watched that bulls vid.
i got goosebumps.
because it was so uberkak.
11 Feb 2013, 16:12 pm
Keo, does Jake talk to you? Where you get this mumbo jumbo junk. Jake is a legend and Clyde will do well because he is a good player but his right ankle bothered him a lot in Darwin. Let Clyde play and stop fixating on Clyde. There are heaps of great stories out there and more than one x saffa in the Brumbies. Every Saffa better pray Jake does not sign for Argentina or OZ or NZ. As it is, the resurgent Brumbies will contribute to the boks dropping below OZ in IRB ranking. Mark these words.
11 Feb 2013, 16:18 pm
@Craven, yes he was pretty bloody average – look no further than an overall winning record of 67% as Bok coach – that is average
11 Feb 2013, 17:55 pm
Whichever way you spin it, Jake White and the class of 07 brought the world cup home. No “if’s and but’s”, fact! You simply can’t be useless and win a RWC ma-gents. As for old Rattlebones, I wish him only the very best. Wouldn’t wish injury and depression on anyone and we all know, just under the surface, he’s still a Saffer.
And jeez, that Bulls vid was painful. And I’m a Bulls supporter.
11 Feb 2013, 18:55 pm
Viva Jake White Viva………
Oh and I enjoyed the article.
11 Feb 2013, 19:40 pm
Jake White’s a bit of a prick no amount of arse kissing or blowing smoke up his overrated arse is going to change that..
And if ever there was a duplicitous set of double standard principles of hero worshIp touted as genius it’s this Clyde Rathbone – JW angelic circus over in googly golly wobbly oolong gone gooloongwannaland as some feeble heroics by the same schmucks who wholesale seek the demise and demonizing of Watsons Kings.
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