News24.com | Bulls bereft of Springbok star quality, White admits after Toulouse taming

Antoine Dupont. (Photo by Charly TRIBALLEAU / AFP)

• Jake White admitted that the Bulls were well short of the Springbok quality needed to challenge Toulouse after their Champions Cup last 16 defeat.
• In a game where the French showed their gulf in class, the Bulls went down 33-9 to Antoine Dupont and Co.
• But White said the game was a lesson in where his players needed to be in order to compete with the five-time European champions.

Bulls director of rugby Jake White conceded that his squad was devoid of enough current Springbok quality in the aftermath of their defeat to Stade Toulousain in France on Sunday.

The Bulls went down 33-9 to Antoine Dupont and Co in Toulouse, where they barely laid a paw on the five-time European champions, thereby exiting the Champions Cup at the last 16 stage.

Toulouse, meanwhile, host the Sharks this Saturday (16:00 kick-off).

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White fielded his two Springbok stars, Kurt-Lee Arendse and Canan Moodie, but the rest of the team couldn't get them into positions to use their X-factor prowess.

Elsewhere on the park, they lacked an international starting front-row that came up against Toulouse' Cyril Baille, Julien Marchand, and Dorian Aldegheri - all internationals - who made up the France front-three that beat England 53-10 at Twickenham during the Six Nations.

Lock Thibaud Flament, who started the France-England game, came off the bench for Toulouse and scored one of their three tries.

READ | White puts torrid Bulls six-loss run to backburner after Toulouse defeat: 'It's irrelevant'

"Yes ... That's the problem and it puts it into perspective," said White about the chasm in internal quality on display at Stade Ernest-Wallon.

"I say it week in and week out. You see how Kurt-Lee and Canan change our team and it's two Springboks, who might not even start in the World Cup.

"Because we've got (Makazole) Mapimpi, Cheslin Kolbe, Willie (le Roux) and Damian (Willemse), these two guys will probably not start at the World Cup. They make a massive difference to our game.

"When you put that into context and you've got teams like the Stormers, who've got 11 Springboks and the Sharks have 11, it's very different.

"I was saying to one of the guys in the changing room that Antoine Dupont and (Romain) N'tamack have got more Tests together (83) than our whole team (excluding substitutes Bismarck du Plessis and Morne Steyn) has Test match experience.

"I don't want to sound like a stuck record, but we're far off from where we need to be to win this competition, and where we want to be as a union, and far off from where we foresee ourselves in terms of where we need to get to.

"We will get it right."

But White said he wanted to ensure that his charges, some of whom became first-time Boks under his stewardship (including Arendse, Moodie, Elrigh Louw and Ruan Nortje), learnt from the beating and understood the levels they needed to get to for them to be title challengers.

"That's what they'll take out of it. That this is the benchmark of where you want to be when you're playing in a club (franchise) team," he said.

"It's the benchmark in all things: the way they play, the way they do things, how the stadium looks, how they fill the stadium up with their supporters.

"I said to them, in the pre-season, when you're running hills or doing gym, think about the moments of what it was like playing Toulouse in Toulouse in front of 33 000 people.

"That should motivate you. That's the level of club rugby we want to try and get to when we're in South Africa."

WRAP | Champions, Challenge Cup last 16 results