Jake White confirms his Springbok stars will join Bulls on URC tour

By SABC Sport
7th October 2024

Jake White has revealed that he will not be resting his Springbok stars for the Bulls' upcoming URC tour, where they will face the Ospreys, Scarlets and Benetton.

White named what he described as his "strongest team" in four years for last weekend's 47-21 win over Ulster and he's not looking to take his foot off the pedal, despite other South African teams giving their players time off after their Rugby Championship success.

Sharks stars Siya Kolisi, Vincent Koch and Eben Etzebeth are among the players who are enjoying holidays after the Rugby Championship but White fielded the likes of Kurt-Lee Arendse, Ruan Nortje, Elrigh Louw and Gerhard Steenekamp on Saturday and has also selected them for the overseas tour.

The Bulls boss has explained the reasoning behind his decision as he attempts to balance the need to keep the Bulls' momentum but also keep the players fresh for the November internationals.

"All of them," White said when asked how many of his Boks will go on tour.

"It's one of the difficult things because I just think it's important that if they don't play for three weeks and then they have a two-week camp that means for five weeks they don't play any rugby.

"And then they play Scotland, so I'm going to have to manage them."

He further explained that the timings of the call-ups also factored into his thinking as some of the Bulls players that were involved with the Springboks were not there from the start of the year.

"A guy like Ruan Nortje had four weeks off and he got called in late, Elrigh Louw had time off and got called in late so it's not a necessity that they have to have leave now," he added.

"What it is between now and the end of April, I think we have got to give them the time that they need in terms of if it's three they need five if it's four they need four and over Christmas there's two weeks.

"There are a couple of games where we can rotate the squad and give them weeks off but that's all dependent on injuries obviously, but I mean we need to build momentum and we need to get players playing."