White says Bulls showed they’re ‘good enough to win against any opposition’

Bulls director of rugby Jake White cut a dejected figure after their Challenge Cup quarter-final loss against Edinburgh on Saturday.

He told media the 34–26 defeat at the Hive Stadium in Scotland “hurts more than any other game because you are out of the competition” and players in the dressing room showed this.

However, the way the Bulls played in the last 34 minutes to fight back from a 31–7 deficit, scoring three of their four tries in that period, showed they are closing in on becoming the team White had referred to repeatedly through the season when just about every week he said they were not where they wanted to be yet.

“We showed that in the last 30 minutes of today’s game that we are good enough to win against any opposition,” White said. “We just need to find 80 minutes of good rugby.

A penalty try plus two scores from David Kriel and one from Cameron Hanekom – with three out of three conversions from Keagan Johannes and Johan Goosen – gave the Bulls hope as they pushed Edinburgh right to the wire.

In the end, White said if they had five more minutes in the match, they would have won.

Bulls show fighting spirit

“We are disappointed because we really wanted to win this game and you could see by the way we fought until the last minute that this team genuinely wants to win trophies.

“What more can a coach want: You’re 31–7 down and you lose with the last play of the game that was a turnover in the opposition 22m. There isn’t a nice way to lose but there are a lot of positives we can take from that game.”

Still, White lamented the poor performance of the Bulls, which saw them receive two yellow cards (conceding 21 points when they were a player down), miss 24 tackles, lose 10 balls at the breakdown, and perform far from their usual standard in the line-outs.

“You can’t concede 14 points in the first 14 minutes with 14 men on the field against a team like this. They’ve got internationals right through their squad. They’ve just come off Six Nations, which means those guys have played against England, Ireland, France – they are obviously very ready and battle-hardened. We made it very difficult for ourselves.”

The scoreline could have looked much worse

Yet again, the coach commended the fight back in the same breath he voiced his disappointment.

“But I am still very proud. At 31–7 we could have easily gone the other way. We’ve seen how a lot of teams in the back end of this competition have blown other teams away. And to literally get the last play of the game turned over in the 22m is something that I am really happy about.”