A year ago Jake White’s Bulls took a 35-8 beating in the Rainbow Cup final against Benetton and a few months later they would debut in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship with a crushing 31-3 defeat against Leinster in Dublin.
Marcell Coetzee captained the Bulls in that hapless night in Treviso on June 21, 2021. In Dublin on Friday night Coetzee again led a Bulls starting XV overseas. In all 10 of the same players started the two respective matches, but those players who won against one of Europe’s finest teams in Dublin were unrecognisable to the imposters who had travelled to Treviso.
The turnaround in a year has been remarkable. Coetzee, as a leader and player, has been larger than life itself and the youngsters have followed wherever he has asked them to go.
White has been central to every success of the Bulls in the past three years. He has fashioned a turnaround in playing style and also in playing personnel.
Whereas seasoned old hands took charge in White’s first year, those experienced former internationals like Morne Steyn and Bismarck du Plessis have been content to mentor and close out games. Both did it with aplomb in Dublin.
Coetzee, on the field, has been the star of the show but the biggest individual victor since relocating to Loftus Versfeld has been White, winner of the 2007 World Cup with the Springboks and the mastermind of a junior World Cup and a history-making first ever European title for French club Montpellier.
White, with the Brumbies in Australia, in his one season with the Sharks and during his three years in Japan, won big matches, advanced to play-offs and got a bit of silverware along the way, but it is what White has achieved with the Bulls that stands alone and way out in front.
It has been a match made in heaven for White whose coaching pedigree has powered on the lights at Loftus Versfeld.
The players believe in White, the executive leadership trusts White’s judgement and the Bulls shareholders allow him to get on with building a franchise that has the potential to be one of the biggest in the world.
White, between 2004 and 2007, built the Springboks into world champions. He invested in some of the most brilliant young players produced in SA — most notably Victor Matfield, Bakkies Botha, Schalk Burger, Juan Smith, Fourie du Preez, Frans Steyn and Bryan Habana — and he resurrected the international careers of veterans Os du Randt and Percy Montgomery. He also settled on John Smit as his leader and backed him all the way.
He’s been central to every success of the team in the past three years
That Bok squad was something special and when they beat England 36-0 in pool play at the 2007 World Cup, it was expected of them to win the final.
In Dublin, very few outside of White and his players, expected the Bulls to beat Leinster, who the week before had dismantled the Glasgow Warriors 76-14.
I had the Bulls to lose by 15 and be brave in defeat. I got it so wrong and what I got most wrong was underestimating the growth of those players who a year ago bumbled their way through 80 minutes against Benetton.
A criticism of the Bulls before White’s arrival was that they were mighty at home and meek abroad and that they so easily turned from granite to putty, but in Dublin they were as mighty as they were in Pretoria when they beat the Sharks with the final kick of the quarterfinal.
You have to admire what they have produced since White took charge and once there is that acknowledgement, then the admiration quickly turns to adulation because they are a team easy to like and very easy to watch.
• Mark Keohane is the founder of keo.co.za, a multiple award-winning sports writer and the digital content director at Highbury Media., Twitter @mark_keohane
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