The Sinbin

Springbok head coach Jake White has claimed that his players ignored direct coaching orders in South Africa’s defeat to France. Responding to media criticism over his teams lack of creativity, White took the unusual step of publicly rebuking his team.

“Rock - we pass; Paper - we bash and Scissors - we run”

The Bok headmaster is under huge pressure after his team seriously failed to impress in the warm-up fixtures leading into the Tri Nations. In a press conference, held at JHB International before his team departed for Australia, he revealed that his players had ‘clearly failed’ to implement the game plan he and his assistants had developed.

‘I unmistakably told the kids to pass, run into someone, recycle, pass, run into someone, recycle, pass twice and then run into someone - anyone,’ said the former IRB Coach of the year. ‘If we got it back again we were to pass it and look for someone to run into. In other words, pass, bash, pass, bash, pass, pass, bash, pass, bash, etc. However, we clearly went, pass, pass, bash, pass, pass, bash, pass, and kicked down their throats. That, you can see, is a totally different sequence of passing and bashing.

I can’t help it if the boys are failing to implement the tactical orders we have worked on.’

White then produced a few envelopes and a couple of beer mats on which he had laid out his strategy for the French match. Holding the scraps to the assembled journalists, he pointed to the diagrams: ‘See, right there. Pass, bash, pass, bash, pass, pass, bash. Does that look like pass, pass, bash, pass, pass, bash, pass, bash, kick down their throats to you?’

South Africa Rugby Union officials, however, have reacted with caution to White’s words. ‘At the end of the day,’ said an SARU spokesperson, ‘the headmaster is the one responsible for making sure his players pass, bash and bash again in the correct sequence. SARU will obviously be talking about these latest revelations in our next committee meeting. We will include any documents, envelopes or beer mats that Jake wishes us to consider as evidence.’

“Extend my contract or it’s extra homework for the team!”

The defeat has led to a clamor of calls for White’s head from politicians, farm laborers and certain figures in the media, but the Bok coach is standing firm: ‘It’s all about the bish, bash, bosh. Once we get that right, everything else will look after itself.’

One Springbok player, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Sinbin that some of the beer mats were illegible: ‘Look, one of them was soggy from the beer spillage and some of the boshes looked like passes and some of the passes looked like bashes. We tried our best.’