Jake White says Bulls need brains and brawn to beat Sharks in URC semi

Bulls coach Jake White believes the team whose emotions are best in check will emerge triumphant in Saturday's massive United Rugby Championship semifinal between his side and huge local rivals the Sharks at Loftus Versfeld.

While the Bulls have been the most consistent South African team in the URC, finishing second on the final round-robin standings, the Sharks are the star-studded squad with a dozen Springboks, just waiting to click and assert the dominance their playing roster suggests they should have.

While the Sharks have played in fits and starts this season, they keep winning the tight matches and they showed enormous nerve to come back from 21-10 down with 15 minutes remaining in their quarterfinal against Munster to force the game into extra time and then win the kicking shoot-out that decided the outcome.

The Bulls also had to show their endurance and spirit in coming back from a 21-8 deficit after a half-hour of their quarterfinal against Edinburgh in Pretoria.

They ultimately won 42-33 and White said the resilience they showed will be crucial against the Sharks, but they also need to add accuracy to their effort.

“I'm very happy that there was a lot of fight and resilience and learnings today, but control and composure, those are the two big words. For the first 25 minutes against Edinburgh, it looked like we didn't have any.

“We looked quite spooked and nervous in our decision-making, our passes and our reads on defence. But then in the last 50 minutes we were as composed and chilled as we have been the whole year.

“In the last 15 minutes, it was like everyone had decided Edinburgh were not going to score again, we made sure we controlled the game. To go from 21-8 down to winning shows that there must have been some learning in this team.

“Often in top-level sport, you've got to find a different way to win. We were dead, but we found a way in the last 10 minutes of the first half and in the second half,” White told SportsBoom.co.za.

The 2007 Rugby World Cup-winning coach also said the Bulls' star players need to step up and play major roles in knockout games.

White would have been pleased by the performances, especially in the second half, of Marco van Staden, Marcell Coetzee, Akker van der Merwe, Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Willie le Roux, Cameron Hanekom, Embrose Papier, Ruan Nortje and Wilco Louw against Edinburgh.

“Henning Gericke, the full-time psychologist who works with the team, said he feels more than ever now that the senior players have taken charge of the team. Previously we've had games where the seniors and the decisionmakers played their worst in knockout matches.

“But taking ownership of your role as a senior player can only have a domino effect: Look at the 2007 World Cup final when Victor Matfield was man of the match; the same with 2019 and Duane Vermeulen.

“Marco is a World Cup winner and we put him on for Marcell when he got a bang on the shoulder. Not many clubs can do that. We brought Akker van der Merwe on for Johan Grobbelaar and Jan-Hendrik can also play hooker. They are all Springboks and when you have that situation in every position then you get results.

“Willie with his experience, played well too. You need your big players to play well to win knockout games and we've probably lacked that in the past — our best players stepping up in big games. Even the bench, the way they came on and scrummed, we were almost stronger in the second half than before,” White told SportsBoom.co.za.

SportsBoom