Jake White: Final against Leinster is 'D-Day' for the Bulls

RTÉ News​

a day ago

Jake White has known since very early this season that the road to a first BKT United Rugby Championship title for the Bulls would go through Dublin.
Beaten finalists in 2022 and 2024, the Bulls have been the most consistent off the four South African franchises in these first four seasons of the new URC, but they've failed to get over the finish line.
While suffering disappointment in losing at home to Glasgow in last year's decider, five wins from six to start this campaign gave a strong indication that the Pretoria side would be in the shake-up once again when the URC got down to the final weeks of the season.
The head coach also suspected as much, and has had his players preparing to for this final Dublin trip for quite some time.
"My message for the last four or five months was, 'if you think you're good enough to beat Leinster away, then you've got to win all these games to get to the final', which we've now done," White said, speaking from the Bulls' training base at St Mary's RFC.
"The question I've said to them this week is, 'you've said you're going to beat Leinster away, now let's see how good we are'.
"That's been coming for four months, because it was inevitable that they were going to get first place because no one was going to catch them.
"It's now D-day for us, to do what we said we were going to do."
While Leinster's home advantage makes them favourites to claim their first URC title, and first trophy since 2021, there will be no fear in the Bulls camp about what they will face.
Their win against Munster at Thomond Park in April saw them become the first of the South African sides to win an away game against all four provinces, and they also had a clean sweep of wins against Irish sides in the 2024/25 regular season.
Additionally, three years ago, White's side went to the RDS and pulled off a shock semi-final win against Leinster, before beating them in the semis at Loftus Versfeld 12 months ago.
The former Springbok coach isn't willing to reveal what the secret sauce is from those previous semi-final wins against this week's opponents though.
"I suppose there are [recurring themes], but I'm not going to share them with you on media," he added, with a grin.
It doesn't take a genius to work out that they will go after the scrum, an areas they have had dominance in across the last couple of seasons, and notably in their last two meetings with Leinster.
"It has been an element we have tried to improve on, and there is no doubt our scrum has made significant strides in the last couple of seasons. That's through personnel as well, which you can understand.
"I mean, why would a guy like Rabah Slimani be signed by Leinster? There is only one reason, because they see that as an area where they want make sure they can improve.
"A guy like Rabah Slimani comes along and there's something in the middle of the scrum, lineout that they needed.
"I suppose every club and every director of rugby would like to be in that situation," added White, ahead of this Saturday's final at Croke Park, for which more than 30,000 tickets had been sold by Tuesday morning.
The unusual quirk of this weekend's final is that both sides are looking to become champions for the first time, despite having the two best records of wins to losses over the last four seasons, with Leinster having won 59 games in the URC era, and Bulls next best on 54.
But White, who lost powerful number 8 Cameron Hanekom to injury in Saturday's semi-final win against the Sharks, knows the regular season counts for nothing in the summer.
"That's the nature of this competition. You've got to get it right. One of the messages I got to the players was: one of the things about this competition is that you need to play your best rugby in the last three weeks, and we haven't managed to do that in the four years.
"We have managed to play really well over a period of time but we haven't managed to back up three performances in a row. That's the challenge for all these teams.
"You got to have your best guys out, they got to be playing their best and you've got to prepare them the best they can be for those last three Saturdays."
It's been an emotional month for those in Bulls and the wider South African rugby community following the death of wing Cornal Hendricks (above) last month.
The former Bulls and Springboks winger died of a suspected heart attack, with Saturday's final falling on his one month anniversary.
As a mark of respect, the Bulls retired his old number 14 jersey for the remainder of the season, and he says that number has been popping up a lot in his mind in recent weeks.
"He died on the 14th of May, and Saturday we play on the 14th of June. It's quite an ominous number.
"Funny enough, I was doing a bit of homework and I read that Bloody Sunday, 14 people died at Croke Park. It's quite amazing that the number 14 comes up.
"There is a lot of nice memories of Cornal that we will use [for motivation] and the number 14. Hopefully it will be a fantastic day on the 14th off June for us as a club as well.
"There is a lot of relevance, the number 14 not being used this weekend. Sometimes you need that. You guys are from Ireland and look what Munster did in the time that they lost their coach [Anthony Foley] and how quickly that turned the way for Munster that year.