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'I know how': Jake White eyes Test return and plots Springboks' downfall
By Neil Fissler
Springbok World Cup-winning coach Jake White admits that he is ready to return to coaching and has unfinished business on the international stage as he looks for his next job.
White, who led the Springboks to success in the 2004 Tri-Nations and then the 2007 World Cup, is a free agent after leaving the Bulls last July and says that he is missing coaching.
He had a stint as a technical advisor to Tonga in 2014 and would love to mark the 20th anniversary of winning the Webb Ellis Cup with another crack at success.
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“I was 40 when I coached South Africa, and before I turned 44, I won the World Cup and had finished coaching them. I haven’t been involved in coaching Test rugby since that time.
“And so, when you say, do I want to get back? I still think I have unfinished business at the Test level. It’s like taking Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu out of Test rugby now.
“Telling him he will never play again when he’s first shown you that he can compete at that level. I coached South Africa, I know how South Africa operate, I know South Africa are the benchmark.
“I know South Africa is probably going to have to get beaten for someone to win the World Cup. You would think that would be a sort of commodity in coaching,” he said.
White, who will be 63 in December, is keen to give someone the benefit of the experience that he has accumulated at the very top level of the game over three decades and doesn’t believe coaching should be a young man’s game.
“Why is it that younger coaches are in front in the queue to older coaches?
“In my time, serving your time and being around and getting all the knowledge you can was a bonus.
“Whereas now, if you look around, a lot of coaches come in when they’re in their 30s or mid 40s, and they jump the queue ahead of coaches who’ve gone and served their time.
“There’s a reason why a coach gets better as he gets older. It’s because the experiences and the knowledge he picks up, again, Eddie Jones had something this week, which is right.
“You only learn in front of 80,000 people when you’re playing and you make those mistakes. You cannot simulate that in training. Do they go from that experience into becoming a better player?
“I brought Eddie Jones in because I realised that you know needed that experience, and he was the guy who had lost the World Cup final.
“Other than Clive (Woodward), who won the World Cup, he was the next guy, and I was so lucky and so, so fortunate that he was available to come and help me with South Africa at that stage,” he added.
