Jake White braced for Bulls charge at the 'Barcelona' of club rugby

BIG CHALLENGE: Jake White (Director of rugby) of the Vodacom Bulls. Pic: Steve Haag

Jake White has his narrative and he won’t be diverted from it. 

The Bulls coach has led with the underdog card all week and ahead of Saturday’s URC semi-final at Loftus Versfeld against a Leinster team that he has repeatedly intimated is Ireland but in blue.

Big them up, make the fall even harder when it comes. 

It’s a policy that has no truck with the suggestion that the visitors might be vulnerable mentally for the repeated failures to get over the line in so many pivotal games this last three seasons.

White’s take on this was a wry smile, a declaration that he wasn’t about to offer up “a phrase or a team talk that you can stick up on the wall”, and an expression of empathy for Leo Cullen as his counterpart has gone about his annual fight on two fronts.

Lest we forget, the Bulls picked a shadow side for the Champions Cup quarter-final away to Northampton Saints and absorbed the 59-22 defeat that followed as a price to be paid for their own singular focus on this URC title chase.

Leinster adopted a similar policy when travelling with a callow crew for two URC games in South Africa in April. All so that their front-liners could stay in Dublin and prepare for a showdown with Toulouse in London that they ultimately lost anyway.

The wisdom of that decision will be scrutinized all the more if they fall short at altitude in Pretoria given the two losses incurred to the Lions and the Stormers were so influential in losing them home advantage for this stage of the knockout run-in.

For White it was a case of damned if Leinster did and damned if they didn’t.

“What they manage to show people is that even if you prepare, have great players and do that juggling act of getting things spot on it is still difficult. In hindsight it is easy. People will say he should have brought the A-team here and finished top of the log.

“Had they done that and not got over the line in the European Cup final then people would have said ‘see, by finishing top of the log they lost to Toulouse’. So, I really have a massive respect for Leo and the Leinster way.

LEINSTER-BOUND: Jordie Barrett appears dejected during the Rugby World Cup 2023 final.

“I mean, which club can sign Jordie Barrett and RG Snyman next year? Which other club that you know can do that? It’s like the Barcelonas of football and credit to them. I’m sure there’s pressure. There’s pressure on us as well.” 

Maybe but White has also gone on record to say that his Bulls boys have “no chance” here in a game which he also claims to be a “dress rehearsal” for the opening Test between the Springboks and Ireland at the same storied venue in early July.

It won’t be that, not with only 23,000 tickets sold as of Friday morning.

RED TO BLUE: RG Snyman during Munster rugby squad training. Pic: Brendan Moran, Sportsfile

“This is almost the Bulls playing the Irish national team. I wouldn’t be surprised if 20-25 of these guys playing here this week don’t come back in two weeks’ time to play in the same venue. So it is one of the biggest games we have had to play in recent times.

Leinster, he said, is the “benchmark” for these Bulls in much the same way as the Crusaders, the Brumbies and Suntory in Japan were the benchmark down the years in their own right. 

The common denominator with them all? They had the best attacking games.

In actual fact, it is the Bulls who have scored more points and more tries than anyone else in the course of this URC regular season. They’ve done it with a team that brings brawn, attacking finesse and a clinical kicking game to the table.

Trying to counter this will be a Leinster defence that has rewritten its defensive playbook under Jacques Nienaber, the former Springbok coach, who arrived in Dublin in late November and went about installing a rush, blitz defence.

White has seen this before. His own Bok side used the same system in 2004. A fan of American football, he will tell you that plays seen in today’s NFL might look new but they are mere facsimiles of others used back in the ‘60s. Rugby, he says, is the same.

“Jacques is obviously a very, very good defensive coach, and it is taking nothing away from him, but he joined a world-class team. All you have to do is polish the diamond. I don’t think Leinster’s defence was ever poor and I don’t think the Irish defence has ever been exposed.

“What I am saying is don’t underestimate the value that Jacques has added but also don’t underplay the fact that Leinster were always a powerhouse team. Historically, they have always been watertight.” 

Vodacom Bulls: W Le Roux; S Petersen, D Kriel, H Vorster, D Williams; J Goosen, E Papier; G Steenekamp, J Grobbelaar, W Louw; R Vermaak, R Nortje; M Van Staden, E Louw, C Hanekom.

Replacements: A van der Merwe, S Matanzima, F Klopper, R Ludwig, N Carr, K Johannes, C Smith, C Smit.

Leinster: J O’Brien; J Larmour, G Ringrose, R Henshaw, J Lowe; R Byrne, J Gibson-Park; A Porter, D Sheehan, T Furlong; J McCarthy, J Ryan; R Baird, J van der Flier, C Doris.

Replacements: R Kelleher, C Healy, M Ala’alatoa, R Molony, J Conan, L McGrath, C Frawley, J Osborne.

Referee: S Grove-White (SRU).