• Joy for Jake the coaching giant and his brilliant Bulls

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    Saturday in Pretoria belonged to Jake White and his Bulls. This was a history-making day for the coach as the Bulls crushed the Sharks, writes Mark Keohane.

    The Vodacom Bulls, in thumping the Sharks 44-10, won back-to-back Currie Cup finals, against the same opposition, and also won for a 22nd time at Loftus under White. It was also the Bulls 25th Currie Cup title and the 34 points winning margin is the biggest in the history of the 100-plus years of the competition.

    This was a brilliant performance, more so that it was produced in a final.

    White’s Bulls have turned Loftus into a fortress since his arrival from Japan and they have had to do it without any fans in the stadium. Saturday’s final was a match, but with 50 000 packed in it would have been an occasion.

    The Sharks turned the Bulls over in Durban a few weeks ago, but on Saturday there was only ever one winner in the home team.

    White has built a squad the envy of every other South African provincial/regional coach. He has invested so strategically in veteran South African players and he has never hesitated to rely on youth in the biggest of matches.

    White’s Bulls won Super Rugby Unlocked in 2020, won the 2020 Currie Cup (the final played in 2021) and won the South African Conference of the Rainbow Cup in 2021. They finished first in the 2021 Currie Cup league, nine points clear of second place, scored 48 points in the semi-final win against Western Province and 44 points in a one-sided final against the Sharks.

    White, in the absence of Morne Steyn, took comfort from the outstanding form of Johan Goosen at flyhalf. White managed to get Goosen to return to South Africa, via the Bulls, after several years in France. Goosen on Monday was ruled out of the final with Covid.

    However, White’s squad depth, built over the past two years, meant that Chris Smith, former SACS, Maties and Pumas No 10, had been in the system long enough to be picked, and Smith produced a match-winning performance.

    Smith, over the past two years, has always been in the Bulls match 23, be it starting or playing off the bench. He won the Currie Cup in 2020, replacing Steyn in the final few minutes and White has never been afraid to turn to Smith.

    When Goosen was declared unavailable, White had a player he could trust, despite him being third in the pecking order.

    What differentiates White from most coaches is that he has no issue identifying numbers one to three in each position and telling those players if they are one, two or three in the pecking order. He then challenges No 3 to get to No 1 and No 1 to stay at No 1 and No 2 to get to No 1 and not to drop to No 3.

    What his track record shows is that he invariably ends up with three players per position capable of starting the biggest matches. Smith is a case in point.

    Marcel Coetzee’s experience is another case in point, while the stand out player was loose-forward Elrigh Louw. White, when I chatted to him a few months ago, identified Louw as a future Springbok, sooner rather than later.

    White has also resurrected Cornal Hendricks’s career and it was poignant that it was Hendricks who scored the final try to take the Bulls past 40 points.

    White will credit his players, his support staff and his assistant coaches, but if there is one man who can stand very tall in Pretoria for what he has achieved, it is the coach who won South Africa the World Cup in 2007 and a few years before that won South Africa the junior World Cup.

    Jake White is a winner – and 22 successive home victories, back-to-back Currie Cup titles, a Super Rugby Unlocked title and the league winner in every competition the Bulls have played in since he arrived makes a compelling argument about his qualities as a coach.

    SA Rugby Mag recap of Bulls 44-10 Currie Cup final win against the Bulls

     

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    Article written by

    Keo has written about South African and international rugby professionally for the last 25 years

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