Bulls are still alive in United Rugby Championship - Jake White after bonus-point win over Zebre

Cape Town – It was mission completed for the Bulls in their 45-7 United Rugby Championship victory over Zebre, said coach Jake White, who is taking the “glass half-full” stance on Friday night’s performance.

The Pretoria side were all over the place in the opening 20-odd minutes at the Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi in a chilly Parma, with even captain Marcell Coetzee yellow-carded for taking out wing Jacopo Trulla in the air - reducing the Bulls to 14 men for 10 minutes.

And even though that they made numerous handling errors and wasted a couple of attacking lineouts, the fact that they scored six tries and 45 unanswered points – after conceding a try to flyhalf Antonio Rizzi – was enough to satisfy White.

“We had to find our feet in the first 25 minutes, and then we scored 45 points basically from the 25th minute onwards. I thought we scrummed quite well tonight,” White said in the post-match press conference.

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“At the back-end of the game there, for all the hard work that we’d put in, I was glad to see guys like Robert (Hunt) and Bismarck (du Plessis) and Simphiwe (Matanzima) scrum so nicely.

“At the beginning, we had a couple of chances that we didn’t finish. But I thought the way we played, generally, I was quite happy with the way we played.

“It’s not an easy fixture to come here. No other side has come here and given them a 50-pointer – not even Munster. So, it was good for us to get a bit of confidence out of that game as well.”

There is a danger, though, that the Bulls will take too much confidence out of the result, as Zebre are bottom-dwellers in the URC with eight consecutive defeats, while they were also missing eight players who are part of the Italy Six