White warns Bulls against over-reliance on scrums and mauls

Jake White has warned his Bulls team of becoming over-reliant on their dominance in scrums and mauls to win matches.

The frustrated mentor was speaking after their shock 29-19 defeat against a depleted Sharks team in Saturday night’s United Rugby Championship derby at Loftus Versfeld.

“We did everything old school Bulls well. We scrummed, we mauled them to pieces,” White said.

“We can’t be just known as a team that scrums and mauls everybody and then not get a result. That’ll be my message on Monday.

“I just don’t want us to be a team that goes into our shells and we always think we’re going to have scrum penalties and maul penalties and win the game. Because the rest of the game today was the part that let us down.”

Wilco Louw put in another strong scrumming display for the Bulls, and the general forward onslaught provided the hosts with front-foot ball.

But they struggled to find their rhythm on attack, even when the Sharks went down to 12 men in the second half due to yellow cards for Jason Jenkins, Corné Rahl and Ntuthuko Mchunu.

Instead, it was John Plumtree’s resilient Sharks side that hung on before pouncing through late tries by Jordan Hendrikse, Tino Mavesere and Yaw Penxe.

The victory was all the more remarkable because the Durban team was missing 15 top players, including seven current Springboks. They simply outran their opponents.

White admitted that they had no answer to the pace of their opponents, especially in their backline.

He complemented the Sharks for the way they used their strike-runners, with the likes of Jordan Hendrikse, Am, Ethan Hooker and Jurenzo Julius keeping the Bulls defence busy.

The Bulls’ tries came from Jan-Hendrik Wessels and a Johan Grobbelaar brace.

White lamented the lack of variation from his team in Saturday’s performance. He suggested it was a throwback to Bulls teams of old.

“You look at some of he old videos, mauling and scrumming has always been something they’ve been good at.

“I wanted to make sure when I got here that we added more to our game,” he said.

“That’s probably why I’m frustrated today. Because we didn’t look like a team, even against 12 or 13 players, that had enough variation. And maybe we just got sucked into thinking that every call at the scrum and line-out was going to get us a win.”

The fourth-placed Sharks closed the gap on the third-placed Bulls on the URC ladder to just one point, thanks to their five-point haul.

The Bulls have 35 points.

Next up for the Bulls is a home Jukskei Derby in the URC against the Lions next weekend. Their neighbours will be buoyed by their shock 30-23 win over the visiting Stormers at home on Saturday.

The Sharks will next face the Lions in back-to-back derby matches. The first of these matches is away at Ellis Park on March 1.