Ahead of his side’s United Rugby Championship (URC) quarter-final against Edinburgh on Saturday, Bulls director of rugby Jake White has revisited a comment he made during the 2024 season.

White’s troops head into their eagerly anticipated play-off clash at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria in a rich vein of form after finishing the league phase of their URC season in second position in the standings.

This, following an impressive campaign in which they won 14 out of the 18 matches played with only Leinster finishing above them in the table.

Meanwhile, their quarter-final opponents Edinburgh finished in seventh position after winning eight of their 18 URC matches.

Revisits comment made in 2024

And the comment White was referring to was the one he made after last year’s URC final in which the Bulls suffered a 21-16 defeat at home against another Scottish outfit, Glasgow Warriors.

The former Springboks head coach said in the aftermath of that shock result that he might be the problem after the Bulls lost their second URC final in three seasons, after they also lost to the Stormers in the tournament’s showpiece event in 2022.

White repeated that comment when the Bulls lost three successive matches and ahead of this weekend’s encounter with Edinburgh he said he often wondered if he was the reason why his side side struggled at times.

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“I can’t blame effort… [Manchester City manager] Pep Guardiola went from winning six titles to struggling – what changed? You can say it’s injuries or management of injuries,” said the 61-year-old.

“I look at where we are as a club, and I can’t as a coach then distance myself from the fact that it [could] be me.

Doing introspection

“There are things that I’ve done or selection choices I’ve made, recruitment choices I’ve made that I need to have learned from, that either work or don’t work.

“Maybe the calls I made…”

While he admitted that he could analyse how his players perform during matches, White wanted to know who analyses the coaches’ performances.

“As a coach, you have to grow as well. Who does analysis of coaches? Who analyses whether what you do works? So I have to reflect: maybe it’s the way I do things, maybe it’s the way I could have changed things,” he added.

READ MORE: United Rugby Championship: Quarter-final match officials, kick-off times and TV coverage

Src: Planetrugby.com - https://www.planetrugby.com/news/jake-white-draws-pep-guardiola-comparison-as-he-does-introspection-ahead-of-bulls-urc-quarter-final