Ken Borland

Bulls coach Jake White says critics have a tendency to be suspicious about players changing position, but the incredible success story of Cornal Hendricks moving from wing to inside centre and being man of the match in the Currie Cup final shows the tremendous benefits that can be gleaned from such bold decisions.

The 32-year-old Hendricks, barring a couple of seasons in midfield in the early stages of his career at Boland, had played all his rugby before 2020 and all 12 of his Tests for the Springboks on the wing, but White raised eyebrows when he moved the popular Paarl product to centre before his first game in charge at Loftus Versfeld. On Saturday night, after the Bulls’ triumph in the Currie Cup final, White pronounced Hendricks as probably his player of the season.

“Cornal has been phenomenal, probably our best player this season. A lot of guys in that No.12 jersey started on the wing – Ma’a Nonu, Tana Umaga and Caleb Clarke is now establishing himself there as well. It’s about his appreciation for space and it helps having Morne Steyn and Ivan van Zyl inside him. The youngsters have also learnt a lot from Cornal because he is very professional and so dedicated, and a great communicator.

“I started coaching in 1982 and for me it has always been about putting combinations together. Bryan Habana started at centre and became one of the best wings ever, Jean de Villiers played wing and centre, Beauden Barrett plays flyhalf and fullback. One needs to trust the coaching staff and the player. Who knows, one these guys playing wing today might end up at centre as well,” White said.

While Hendricks’ mien is always one of cheerfulness, he has come through numerous tough times in his career, most notably when a heart defect was discovered and he was told n 2015 that he would have to give up rugby. Springbok legend De Villiers, who was Hendricks’ captain in the national team, has high praise for the tenacity of the man.

“When you take Cornal’s whole career in consideration, he’s always been fighting adversity and having to prove himself – from the Sevens circuit to playing for the Cheetahs and then the whole heart thing when no-one wanted to take a risk on him. But he has always adapted and when he moved to centre I almost just expected him to make a success of it.

“And the position has fit like a glove for him, he gets go-forward with the ball and his defence has been very astute. Maybe he doesn’t quite have the pace anymore of his Sevens days, but he still has plenty for an inside centre,” De Villiers told The Citizen.

Coach Jake White praised his bench for doing the business and claiming another late win in the Currie Cup final against the Sharks at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday, but this time the Bulls left it the latest of all their comebacks as they won with a try with just 72 seconds of extra time remaining.

Replacement loose forward Arno Botha, the senior member of the Bulls’ version of The Bomb Squad, scored both of their tries in the final, but it is the second one that will be remembered for many years to come as he reached over the line to break the 19-19 deadlock and seal a 26-19 win.

“It was incredible, with Covid, no crowd, the lightning stopping play in the first half; the team just had to adapt all the time and it will definitely be a final that will be remembered for a long time. I’m so proud of the team and I really enjoyed the way the bench came on and handled the pressure. Arno is one of our ‘captains’, he spoke well to the team and helped keep them calm.

“We’ve given guys like flyhalf Chris Smith and the reserve front row a lot of game time this season, where other teams have played their key guys for 80 minutes every game. I felt the time we have given the bench was a telling factor today, especially in injury time and extra time. They have grown as a group and they again showed their composure because this is not the only game they’ve come back to win,” White said after the gripping final.

The scrum was one of the few amenities where the Bulls had a clear advantage over the Sharks, but with referee Jaco Peyper, who controlled the feisty match extremely well, deciding not to make the final a penalty fest, the home side were only rewarded once with a penalty at the set-piece. It did come at a crucial time though as it set in motion the events that would lead to Botha’s first try, cutting the deficit to 16-19 in the 64^th minute.

“There were times we had go-forward at the scrum and in previous games we would have had the penalty advantage and been able to play. But today we never had that, we had to use the ball coming out. We had to adapt to that interpretation and I would have liked one or two scrum penalties. But we made life too easy for the Sharks at times, we gave them field position.

“The line-speed of the Sharks is also probably the best in the competition and maybe we tried to play a bit too much rugby in our half at times. Maybe we could also have chipped over the line a few times because we were caught behind the gain-line quite often. But the character we showed was amazing, it wasn’t our best game but it’s very good for the team to still win in that situation,” White said.

Bulls coach Jake White has never been averse to stirring up a bit of controversy and, although he does not have much of a social media presence he knows very well how to stoke up conversation before a big game. And in South African rugby, matches don’t get much bigger than the Currie Cup final, which the Bulls will host against the Sharks on Saturday.

But this week White, who admitted that he still feels the pressure of crunch matches, has been strangely restrained and even went as far as to suggest the Sharks might be favourites because half of their team have won the Currie Cup previously. Knowing how canny Jake is though, this is almost certainly some sort of mind game and he will ensure his Bulls team are the most inhospitable of hosts on Saturday.

That’s the thing about  the 57-year-old White, who has been a top-level coach now for almost 20 years, dating back to when he led the Junior Springboks to the U21 World Cup crown in 2002 – there is always a plan and it usually comes off. From utterly transforming a Springbok team that was in disarray in 2004 into World Cup champions in 2007, winning a rare Tri-Nations title along the way, he then took the Brumbies to the 2013 SuperRugby final and the Sharks to the 2014 semifinals, before leading Montpellier to the European Challenge Cup in 2016.

“I’ve been in enough finals and playoffs to know how it works and you can never take away the pressure. So I still feel the pressure and myself and the players will make mistakes, but a final brings the best out of certain players and they take their opportunities. There’s a real buzz in the squad, it’s so nice to be in the changeroom, you can just feel it.

“This is a very proud and driven team, they have a great hunger to win the Currie Cup and I just need to channel that the right way. I felt what it was like to win in the 2007 World Cup and I would like to taste that again, although it doesn’t get easier. But hopefully I can transfer my experience and the lessons I have learnt to the team. I’ll be trying to keep them calm and they must just enjoy the moment,” White said.

Sharks coach Sean Everitt (51) would have had a lot of interaction with White in 2014 because he was one of the Sharks’ assistant coaches, but the relationship between the head coach, his assistants and the players reportedly became strained leading to the World Cup winner spending just a year in Durban.

White was accused of being dictatorial but he has certainly softened since then, and is well-versed in global modern rugby trends.

Everitt’s coaching stock has certainly grown hugely since then as well, and Brad MacLeod-Henderson, who coached with him at the Sharks, winning the Currie Cup in 2013, described him as being a mentor who placed more responsibility on the players.

“Sean is more collaborative, he won’t pitch up and say ‘this is what we are going to do’. He will help the players make the right decisions, depending on the cues the opposition give them. As a former backline player, he’s more creative and he’s in favour of ball-in-hand rugby and having a go. But he wants the players to have a look first; if it’s on, have a go, if not, go to the air. It’s about space and getting the balance right.

“Sean is a great guy and all the players respond well to him being a good person. They have a lot of respect for him, he’s well-liked by the players and they will go the extra mile for him. He has created a good environment  and that’s why the players want to be in Durban because they’re happy on the field,” MacLeod-Henderson told Saturday Citizen on Friday.

The Bulls have already broken their 10-year trophy-drought this season by winning the SuperRugby Unlocked title, but at the end of the day, the Currie Cup is the big prize they are after according to coach Jake White.

The Bulls won the SuperRugby Unlocked competition by four points and those points were then carried over to the Currie Cup. White’s charges have subsequently finished top of the log in the Currie Cup as well, but this time they have to get through two knockout matches to claim the silverware, starting with their semi-final against the Lions at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday afternoon.

“We’re not trying to be arrogant, but we said at the start of the season that we wanted to play in the final and win the Currie Cup. So we’ve now got two weeks left to play, whether you look at this season as one or two competitions or two competitions in one, at the end of the day we are in the playoffs. Now we want to get to the last round and win the trophy.

“We’ve done the hard work to get into the final, we’ve put the hard yards in to justify home advantage. The reality is we’ve got a lotto ticket for the last two rounds, hopefully we stay alive after this weekend. There won’t be any crowds but I still think it’s a massive bonus for the guys to sleep in their own beds, be in their own changeroom, all the little things,” White said this week.

While the 2007 World Cup winning coach acknowledged that it was far from a fait accompli that the Bulls would achieve their goal, White did make their journey in 2020/21 sound somewhat miraculous.

“I’ve coached in competitions before where the first and second team on the log don’t play in the quarterfinals, they go straight to the semis and get a week off. But sometimes the team that finished first on the log doesn’t win, there are still no guarantees even if you finish first. But this team really want to win the Currie Cup, they want to be part of history and write their own script.

“No-one expected us to do so well. I’ve had seven months to work with this group and in the last 10 years the Bulls had not won a senior trophy, we lost five of our six SuperRugby games last year and finished sixth in the Currie Cup in 2019, losing to Griquas at Loftus. So other teams were far ahead of us and I’m very satisfied with how things have gone. But we haven’t really won anything yet,” White said.