White: ‘Ugly’ victories win competitions

Jake White was thrilled with the comeback win by the Bulls in Treviso, and believes they will take confidence from their performance for the rest of the season.

The Bulls clinched a 17-15 victory against Benetton at Stadio Comunale di Monigo on Friday night, overcoming a first-half deficit and sealing the win with a last-minute try by Akker van der Merwe, converted by David Kriel.

The result capped off the Herd’s three-week European tour as White’s charges head home with a 2-1 win-loss record before the Vodacom URC pauses for the November Test window.

Speaking post-match from Italy, White reflected on several changes before kick-off due to illness in the Bulls camp – the most significant being Keagan Johannes promoted from the bench to flyhalf – while praising his team’s resilience, especially in the final moments.

“I wouldn’t say it has never happened where we had to make significant changes [at the last minute]. You don’t often change your quarterback, if we use that analogy,” White told reporters in a teleconference. “We’ve got Johan Goosen who’s injured, Jaco van der Walt who’s injured, and then Boeta [Chamberlain] got sick… we had to put him on a drip.

“Three hours before kick-off we decided to go with Keagan at 10, which meant we had to change our nine as well… and then also change our bench.”

‘Found a way to adapt’

“What I’m really happy about is we found a way to adapt,” he added. “Often teams talk about how you’ve got to adapt and be aware that you can’t always control everything.

“So to get a result like that at the end… you can imagine the change-room is very buoyant. And a guy like Keagan is obviously over the moon that he contributed as a starter and as a 10.

“A minute and a half left and we ended up winning the game, so you can feel proud when you can see your players doing that at the end of the game.”

White didn’t shy away from acknowledging the tough aspects of the match. “It was tough, and sometimes you’ve got to win ugly, but they [Benetton] don’t allow you to play much. They’re a really good defensive team and got a lot of internationals… we were staring down the barrel for most of that game and then we found a way to win,” he noted.

With the Bulls down 9-3 at half time, White’s message to his troops was clear: “The message [at half time] was we haven’t even started playing properly and we’re 9-3 down, and we could’ve easily been 9-6, so I said to them, ‘you’ve got to believe you’re going to win’ and that once we start playing we’ll put them under pressure.

“Our lineout wasn’t good, and it doesn’t matter whose fault it is; whether it’s the throw, the reaction of the jumper, whether the lifter is not understanding the call, whether the caller is calling to the wrong place because he’s under pressure…

“I’m very happy that we were able to pull that one through, because sometimes you need a little bit of hope and that kind of win going into the next block [of matches]. I’ve seen a lot of teams that have gone on to win competitions win games like that, and take a lot of confidence out of that.”

This article was first published on sarugbymag.co.za. It is republished here with permission.