Vodacom Bulls Director of Rugby Jake White refused to make any excuses nor blame the referee following his team’s 19-23 defeat to the Stormers at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday.
“It is really not nice. We dominated the possession and territory, and we trailing 12-13 at the break."
“But we will get better, and I don’t have any doubt that as players and coach, we will get it right."
“I think there is not a player in the team who didn’t give it his all and that is all you can ask for as a coach.”
Asked post-match whether the players took their foot off the gas, White said: “I don’t think they did anything wrong, the reality and the bottom line is the Stormers scored a try and it was suddenly 12-10, and that’s how it works. So I don’t think it was purposeful that they took their foot off the gas.”
The North-South derby was not short of any drama and per usual accompanied by a couple of contention officiating decisions.
“The forward pass the TMO was looking at was probably the wrong one, it probably should’ve been the one going inside not outside,”
“I also don’t think Kriel knocked it down, but that’s my view, it happens. Those are the margins. If he catches that, we score under poles.
“But that is how strict they are about it now, it was almost as if he was guilty before he even caught the ball, but I’m not going to moan about the referee or give you guys a front headline news story ‘Jake White says referees’. It is what it is."
“Even with 14 men, even with a yellow card, maybe we should’ve scored there, we still had two chances in the last two minutes of the game to finish it off and we didn’t.”
