Jake White and Bulls to enjoy long-awaited win against Stormers: ‘It was comprehensive’

After beating the Stormers 40-22 in the United Rugby Championship on Saturday night at Loftus Versfeld, Bulls director of rugby, Jake White, says they will savour the moment as they have waited for a long time for the victory.

The Bulls snapped their 0-7 losing streak to the Stormers in spectacular fashion in front of 50,026 fans in Pretoria on Saturday with White saying ahead of the game the streak would eventually end.

Nobody beats Bulls eight times in a row

Speaking to the media following their first win over the Stormers in the URC, White was in good spirits, going on to compare their long-awaited victory to when former tennis player Vitas Gerulaitis ended his 16-game losing streak to Jimmy Connors.

“We waited a long time for this,” said White with a smile on his face.

“I’ll share a wonderful story with you guys; Vitas Gerulaitis was a tennis player and he played against Jimmy Connors and he lost 16 times. When he eventually won in the 17th time, he said, ‘Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row.’ We’ll enjoy this; we waited a long time.

“Bakkies (Botha, the former Bulls and Springbok lock) said to me in the change room, ‘Sometimes the road is longer,’ and it has taken a bit of a long road for us, but it was comprehensive today.

“We are going to enjoy the fact that we have taken a long time to beat them, and we didn’t just beat them tonight (Saturday), we convincingly beat them and it could have been bigger if we had taken our chances,” he said.

No room for complacency

Tries from Johan Grobbelaar (2), Canan Moodie, Embrose Papier, and 20 points from the boot of Johan Goosen, gave the Bulls a bonus point win, taking them to second place on the URC table with 40 points.

White said there won’t be any complacency following the morale-boosting victory.

“I don’t think we’ll get complacent because we have grown as a team. When we started (at the beginning of the URC competition three years ago), we probably did really well with a young group of players, (but) we were always going to get better. It starts to sink in that the team is getting better and better,” he said.

‘Lazy performance from Stormers’

Reflecting on his side’s loss, Stormers coach Dobson lamented their ill-discipline, saying it was uncharacteristic.

“Uncharacteristically ill-disciplined … almost lazy performance,” Dobson said.

“That first half-hour was probably one of our worst in the URC in terms of discipline. At 12 minutes, we were on five penalties; you can’t play against a team as good as the Bulls like that.

“I don’t know where that came from; it was remarkably poor. Just as we were clawing our way back in the game, we would do something silly,” he said.