Jake White laments the impact of poor discipline as the Vodacom Bulls fell short of the EPCR Challenge Cup semi-finals with a loss in Edinburgh on Saturday.
The Bulls exited the competition with a 34-28 defeat at Hive Stadium. Speaking post-match, White pointed to a 10-minute period in the opening stanza when Zak Burger was yellow-carded for a deliberate knock-on, during which the hosts surged into a 24-7 lead.
Jannes Kirsten, too, was sin-binned barely a minute after the restart for a high tackle on Ross McCann, and Edinburgh capitalised through a converted Grant Gilchrist try.
“You can’t play against an international team with the calibre of players they have, with 14 men and in that time we conceded 21 points. And once you’re 24-7 down, it makes it very, very difficult,” the Bulls director of rugby said.
“Today’s result didn’t come from anything other than the fact that we gave them 14 points in the first half and seven in the second half because we got two yellow cards at a very crucial time.”
Despite trailing by 17 points at half time and falling further behind to 31-7 shortly after the break, the Herd mounted an impressive second-half comeback that brought them within one converted try in the final quarter.
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A penalty try, and tries from Cameron Hanekom and David Kriel made it a one-score game, but former Bulls prop Pierre Schoeman’s breakdown steal at the death ended their hopes of securing a maiden spot in the last four of Europe’s second-tier cup competition.
“I am still very, very proud,” White said. “At 31-7, we could have quite easily gone the other way and you’ve seen a lot of the teams at the backend of this competition have blown other teams away, and to literally get the last play of the game turned over in the 22 is obviously something that I’m really happy about.
“It’s just disappointing because I genuinely thought that, especially with the bench we had… it was almost like we ran out of time.
“It’s like anything, you know, if we played another five more minutes I’ve got no doubt we would end up winning that game.
“We’ve won six out of 11 away games and literally today was another example that we can win away from home and we’re going to have to do that if we want to win competitions in the next couple of years,” he added.
“But it didn’t go our way. First half, as I said, you can’t concede 14 points in the first 10, 11 minutes with 14 men on the field against a team like this.
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“We probably didn’t adapt as quickly as we could. And then it took us 50 minutes to find a way in which we could put them under pressure.”
White’s charges must quickly refocus on the Vodacom URC, where they sit third on the log with four rounds left of the league stages. The Bulls face Munster in Limerick next Saturday before concluding a four-week tour against defending URC champions, Glasgow Warriors.
“[Saturday’s loss] hurts more than any other game because you’re out of a competition. We need to make the last four games of the URC count and then we’ve got to make sure our best team is available and can play their best rugby,” White said.
“Today was a quarter-final and it would have meant there were two games left after this and we showed that in the last 30 minutes of today’s game, that we’re good enough to win against any opposition.
“It’s just we need to find 80 minutes of good rugby.”
Photo: Euan Cherry/Getty Images
