Jake White lauds Bulls' breakthrough victory over Stormers after seven straight defeats

White's men started the game brilliantly and cleverly as they flew out of the blocks and had the visitors on the ropes in the first half-hour. The Stormers managed to come back on the scoreboard before halftime with the scores at 19-15 when the teams went into the sheds.

It seemed like the Stormers were growing into the game but the Bulls turned up the heat again late on and buried their rivals with Canan Moodie and Embrose Papier tries in the second half.

White explained how his team has grown from past losses and praised the overall efforts of his side.

"We will enjoy this. Sometimes the road is longer than it is wide. It's taken a long road for us, but it was comprehensive today. Against a great defensive side, we scored four tries and had one disallowed. Defensively we kept them out," he said.

"A year or two ago, they would have scored in those plays they had on the tryline. We will enjoy this as a team. As I said this week, when we started this project, we did really well early on with a young group. We were always going to get better.

"Right at the end of the game, I doubted the call to put so many players on so early. I thought maybe I shot myself in the foot, there. But those are lessons I learned.

"The gains you get from putting those boys on for that time, giving them the experience of winning in front of 50,000 people is immeasurable.

"It starts to sink in that the team is getting better and better. We had no Elrigh Louw or Cameron Hanekom, just two examples of guys who would have been in our mix, but that creates so much more competition in our group. Now everyone wants to be part of something that is as nice as tonight.

"It was probably the best we've played against them in all the fixtures together. For 28 minutes, they were nowhere, they looked like another team. They didn't look like a champion team."

The Bulls go second on the United Rugby Championship table but White knows the team needs to make the most of this position before they get excited about anything.

"I don't think we are there yet. I am a lot happier with what happened tonight. We could have quite easily lost that game. It was 19-15 and they got three chances just after half time. They could have gone ahead and we would be playing catch up," he added.

"This doesn't mean we've won anything. We've won a game and it's a pool game. We are happy to stay ahead of them, but we've won nothing. We aren't going to get ahead of ourselves. You won't see things on social media about us being the best team that's ever played rugby."

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