Improve, or face more heartache - White's message to Bulls

While there were enough calls in the Vodacom Bulls loss against Connacht to fill two Rassie Erasmus videos, coach Jake White has a simple message for his players - It doesn’t help to complain, we need to be better.

The reality of it, as White knows, is that there are going to be many more hometown decisions as teams travel in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship and what makes a champion team is not that things go against you, but how you react to it.

So while referee Ben Blair may have had a shocker and Connacht capitalised and ran a disheartened Bulls side off the park in the second half, the simple fact is that if the Bulls don’t find a way to overcome their own demons as well as the referee, they will never taste success in the URC.

The steep learning curve is an eye-opener for all the SA teams, not just the Bulls, and while SA teams have never travelled well, the ill-fated belief that the northern hemisphere would be easier is biting them right now.

At the moment SA teams look way off the pace, and cannot even be referred to as a powerhouse given the way they’ve played in the opening two rounds.

Simply put. This is the standard and they have to meet it. Or they will forever be on the losing end.

And White knows that delicately treading on the right side of the comments when he was asked about everything that went wrong.

“We had enough chances in the first half and in the second half we were up against it because they understand how to play here with the wind pumping and the rain coming down, we struggled to get up the hill, there’s a significant rise and a slope down there in the corner where we got trapped,” White said after the game.

“But we’ve got to adapt, there were a couple of calls that went against us, they had the rub of the green like winning a vital toss in cricket, but we turned ball over in our own half.”

“It’s all about learning how to adapt to another environment, it’s as simple as that. The reality is we were not good in conditions that did not suit us, we weren’t accurate, we lost a lot of ball at the back of rucks.

“We’re away from home and we just have to learn and find a way to win. You could see the spring in Connacht’s step when they were 10-7 up at halftime and they knew we had not done enough in the first half,” White said.

The fact that there were two separate interpretations by Blair of the breakdown law is history now. This won’t be the last referee to favour the home side. 

This Bulls side were perhaps naive in the fact they thought the ref would provide parity in decision-making. 

But worse for White is the way the side reacted. In three games in Europe this year, the team has hardly fired a shot, and conceded over 100 points. That’s hardly a statement from the team considered the best in the country.

Simply put, the Bulls have to dig deep and work on their own play. If they get that right, whatever the ref, they will do better. 

Right now, there will be no beating of the chests, but rather soul-searching.