Bulls coach White explains complexities of juggling three tournaments

Bulls coach Jake White has explained the complexities clubs have to negotiate to compete in the Heineken Champions Cup, United Rugby Championship (URC) and Currie Cup.

In between the three tournaments, which requires excessive international travel, some players have national team duties. White said coaches have to be creative on how to use their players given the situation.

The Bulls started the Champions Cup with a hard-fought 42-36 win over Lyon on Saturday night at Loftus even though they endured a late scare.

They travel to Exeter Chiefs at Sandy Park on Saturday with a similar weakened team that beat Lyon. White said this was not to disrespect the opposition but to manage players.

“We are travelling with the same sort of guys who played last week for a lot of reasons,” he said of his management of the squad before they flew to the UK on Tuesday.

“I would like to give them an opportunity of building on to what we did last week. They sort of got to know each other a lot better under pressure, and also we played Leinster last year in the semifinals and had to come back and play in Cape Town.

“We learnt a lot from last year travelling in economy class. We have the Stormers next Friday night. There is no way we could fly via Doha, arrive the following evening at 6pm, then fly on Sunday and arrive here around Monday and expect to be ready for the Stormers game.”

White said the Bulls will try to do well against tough competition in the Champions Cup and URC.

“We respect Exeter, and we have to be on our best against the Stormers too. It is about doing what’s best for our group. We would like to do well in both competitions, but I am also a realist.

“People need to appreciate that for you to win the Heineken Champions Cup on three consecutive weekends you need to beat Toulouse, Leinster and La Rochelle.

“I don’t want to be defeatist, but I am being realistic. Do we have the squad in SA that can match La Rochelle, Toulouse and Leinster on three consecutive weekends away from home?

“It doesn’t mean you are saying URC is not important,” said White. “We want to win as many times as we can. To be fair, looking at elite sport there is no way players can fly around the world in economy class to play Exeter away and fly all the way back around the world to play the Stormers, who are URC champions, the following week.

“It has nothing to do with the fact that one tournament is more important than the other. It is about using the resources at your disposal. The other thing is, Exeter have to come to us in January, and it is going to be 40ºC here.

“They would have just come out of their winter, making it a daunting task for them, and maybe then I can play our strongest team at home. That means we would have beaten Lyon and Exeter, if we beat them here, and we will have a fair crack of making the top 16, the first step you have to take to try and keep yourself alive into knockout stages.”

White said he won’t always play certain players because of their arrangement with SA Rugby.

“SA Rugby has given us a mandate to play our players 32 times a year, and if you play 13 Test matches that means you can only use your players 19 times a year.

“There are 21 URC games, and there are four games if you go further in the Champions Cup. There are about 17 Currie Cup games.

“As you can imagine, 32 matches minus Tests to those three competitions doesn’t add up. I would like to take my main guys, I would like to evaluate them against a team like Exeter that won this competition two years ago and are a difficult team to play against.”