White is back, the Bulls are back and SA cheers

Professional rugby is now officially back in SA and none of the stakeholders in the sport should have any complaints about how the restart, which took the form of Super Fan Saturday at Loftus, went off after the more than sixmonth hiatus.

The political issues that were a hot debating point a few weeks back were handled well by SA Rugby, with a broad range of concerns related to prejudice in all its forms covered in the credo read out on SuperSport before each game. The antiracism message was spelt out in unambiguous fashion by the wording painted onto the playing field.

Considering how long they have been away from the playing field, the teams produced rugby of good quality, with plenty of evidence of the growth in skill-set that was facilitated by having more time to focus on basics in these past six months.

But perhaps the biggest positive was seeing Jake White back in the SA game as coach of the Bulls. And it didn’t take long for White to remind us why he was missed. It came in the prematch interview. When asked about the importance of his team’s game against the Sharks, he could have said it was a friendly game and it was just an opportunity to test depth. Instead he went straight to the point. He stressed the importance of winning.

White is an excellent selector and his confidence in the players he chooses to implement his game strategy is one of his biggest strengths. It was something I was first exposed to in a conversation with him on the eve of his first Test in charge of the Boks against Ireland in Bloemfontein in 2004.

There had been a lot happening off the field in SA rugby at the time and White had also had a few injury issues to deal with during the training camp that preceded the Irish series. There was a lot of negativity about. He asked me what I thought and my answers were full of “if this” or “if that happens” then you have a chance, and so on.

When Jake spoke there were no ifs or buts: “We should always beat Ireland and we will.” It did bite him later that year when Ireland won in Dublin in a week where Jake invoked the ire of the locals by suggesting there wasn’t a player in the Irish team that would make his starting team. But the point is that his confidence rubbed off on the players.

Some Boks of that era remember being scolded at halftime of a match in Australia.

They were playing well and leading, but instead of praising them White lost it with them on the basis that they seemed surprised to be ahead. His message was that they needed to understand what a good team they were and believe in themselves more.

White’s attitude paid off. A team featuring several players who were part of the group that sunk to the nadir of Bok rugby the year before, won the TriNations in 2004 and were only denied a repeat in 2005 by a last-gasp All Black try in their final match in Christchurch.

The players who looked at White so incredulously when in his first meeting with them in 2004 he told them they would win the World Cup — some wondered what he was smoking — were imbued with sufficient belief to realise that dream in France three years later.

The cynical view might be that the Bulls were able to perform so well against the Sharks on Super Fan Saturday because they are used to playing in front of an empty Loftus, but the truth is if they continue like they started against the Sharks the crowds will be returning to the stadium in their droves once coronavirus has left us.

White’s no-nonsense, simple approach to questions asked away from the field that draw far more convoluted answers from others is matched by his team’s approach on the field. The Bulls did the basics right, the pack dominated, the Sharks were obliterated at the contact points, and there could be only one winner.

Forget the fact that the Sharks came back to restore some respectability in the second half once the extensive benches, made up effectively of a full reserve team, were emptied after halftime.

The part that mattered was the period when the two teams were at full strength, and there was no question the Bulls dominated when it mattered.

The score when the changes came was 35-7 and it was not a score that flattered the Bulls.

The message drummed out by his team was as unambiguous as White’s message before the game about the importance of the win. It was that White is back and the Bulls are back.

And both of those are huge positives for SA rugby.