The Vodacom Bulls Director of Rugby, Jake White was clearly relieved and said he got the desired reaction from the Vodacom Bulls in their 31-19 win over the Emirates Lions at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday.
“When you come up against a team that people expect you to beat, then you have to show up was the message to the team and that’s the reaction I got.”
“The message was also that these Lions are an incredibly good attacking team, especially on the counter-attack, they are a team that can score tries and are hard to stop once they get going. They just don’t go away."
"The first 20 minutes were our best in a very long, long time and at that stage, it looked like a one-sided affair. We had them by the throat."
"Then we let them in for two tries in seven minutes, and the yellow card [to Bulls centre Stedman Gans] put us under a lot of pressure for a while. It frustrates me.”
“They are a good team and they can score tries, and when they start running at you, it’s difficult to defend against them.
“They don’t go away, and let’s be fair: they had two or three tries there which were disallowed, and if they score those, then it’s a different pressure in the last 15 minutes.”
“It is irrelevant where you end up in the Pool stages.
“When you know you can’t come first, and let’s be fair, it would be a disaster if Leinster doesn’t end first, that means two, three, four are the positions you want to end up in.
“And teams that have finished fourth have won this competition, every coach will sit here and say let’s win every game, finish top, get a home Semi, a home Final, whatever."
“But the nature of this competition, with all the dynamics of European Cup, Six Nations, rotation of players, injuries – it’s fluid and you have to find a way on the run to manage things.
“So who knows, in the next month a lot of things can change."
“But we want to finish up as high as we can and that is first prize. The second prize is we want to have the last three games for the chance to actually win the competition."
“If we are good enough, we should be able to beat any teams that we have played, and beaten, in the last three seasons."