Jake White, Director of Rugby was careful not to blame mediocre refereeing for their 22-23 loss to the Scarlets on Friday evening, however, he was clear about his feelings on their second red card in two weeks.
White said the Scarlets never gave up. "I've got to give credit to them, I mean, they played well this whole season, played well against Benetton, and played well against Cardiff twice. They were unlucky to lose the first one against Cardiff. They stayed in the fight, they didn't go away, kept fighting, kept fighting, some harder than others, some fell down quicker, but they stayed, they kept fighting."
Jake White was however very clear when asked about van der Merwe's acting. The Bulls' hooker Johan Grobbelaar received a red card for a tackle that was seemingly motivated by the ball carrier Marnus van der Merwe who clutched his head afterwards in an Oscar-worthy performance.
"I will never ever coach a player to lie down and try and influence a decision. That's my thoughts. I've been coaching a long time and I would never ever encourage anything like that," White said.
"Bottom line is I don't think that was a red card. I think there were circumstances which I'm obviously not going to share with you."
"A red card is simple. It's red. You were out of line. It looks unnatural. It's something that stands out and there's no reason for you to keep that guy on the field."
"I think when there's someone that is malicious and it's off the ball and that's genuinely a red card, then we must never take that away from those people. There's no place in rugby for that."
"I will fight for the player because the one thing is that players don't want red cards next to their name. I genuinely think you need to protect the player."
White also admitted that they took a risk after winning the toss and did not listen to the locals regarding the expected wet weather.
"I got some information from locals here that the wind comes as you jog out from the left to the right-hand side."
"When you win the toss and you take a chance, if we hadn't got that weather in the back end of the middle part of the game, maybe, things would have been different. ,It turned out that playing into that rain and wind for a short period of time became difficult for us."
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