VIDEO: Jake on stupidity, smartness and that scrum
03/23/2025 04:08 AM
WATCH as the Bulls' Director of Rugby, Jake White, talks about game smartness, and stupidity but also about beating the top team in the United Rugby Championship with 14 men and a monster scrum in the dying minutes.
The Bulls managed to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat in beating Leinster, at Loftus on Friday but the coach knows it wasn't a perfect performance.
The final camel that broke Leinster's back was the massive scrum right at the end of the game.
Replacement front row of Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Johan Grobbelaar, and Mornay Smith produced the scrum of their lives to win a penalty between the 10-metre and 22-metre lines.
That was the fight-back the Bulls needed and White was over the moon with the way in which his team fought to the bitter end, while knowing they were up against a team that had been unbeaten until this match.
But he lamented the multitude of mistakes, especially in the first half, while there was also a yellow and red card dished out to Alulutho Tshakweni for a dangerous grass-cutter tackle and Sebastian de Klerk for taking out a player in the air.
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"Most teams might have thought, 'That's it, game gone'. Most teams would've accepted that Leinster would've finished the game off," White commented at the post-match press conference.
"And they didn't. How much price can you put on a team that says, 'Forget it, we are going to get a scrum penalty here'?
"And that is all I was asking. Just make sure that today we are desperate to get a result. I want to see for 80 minutes that you are desperate for a result. I don't want to see anything else.
"We needed a scrum penalty in the last play of the game, and they needed to put the ball in and out, and kick the ball out.
"And after two resets, we managed to get the penalty on the third scrum," White stated.
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But he was brutally honest in his assessment that there were a lot of mistakes, poor handling, and poor decisions, especially in the first half.
White puts it down to a lack of game smartness - something a coach cannot teach a player. It comes with maturity and a will to do better.
"I'm not going to condone red cards, yellow cards, stupidity... Because when we get to the knockout stages, we will lose those games.
"We need to be more smart. We can't be stupid and think that we are going to get to the back end of the competition and win it if we don't make better decisions in those situations.
"It's stupid things, stupid - unbelievably stupid. New Zealanders talk about game smartness, and I think that it is the bottom line.
"You've got to understand where you are on the field, what the score is, what your job is...
"That smartness is also something a player has to learn. You can't coach him every single thing about his role.
"The maul try and the yellow card... There is a lot of effort in that. You know how tired you get when you have maul, scrum, maul, scrum.
"I'm proud of the way they fought, and the bench came on and made an impact. But I'm also not sweeping anything under the table.
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"And the reality is that it's just because of our actions. Four times we've given penalties away for playing the nine – three of those were yellow cards.
"Today, we play the guy in the air: red card. You take everything away from the effort the other guys put in to get back in the game."
But to grind out a win when it all looked over and done with is a testament to a side that never gave up hope and kept on fighting.
"For 80 minutes, even with 14 men, they found a way to win. And let's be fair - that's what sport is about.
"The good far outweighs the negative.
