Bulls coach White's key message: 'Stay in the fight'

Bulls coach Jake White says his side took valuable lessons from Leinster's Champions Cup final loss to La Rochelle.

The South African franchise, in their first year in the United Rugby Championship, are through to the final following a 27-26 victory over holders Leinster at the RDS.

Leo Cullen’s side went into the European final as favourites but were outmuscled and eventually outscored three tries to none.

In this evening’s game Leinster scored four tries to Bulls’ three but penalties from Chris Smith and Morne Steyn made the difference in the end.

"The belief was that we could win," said White.

"The thing we realised is that we’ve just got to stay in the fight. Once Leinster get ahead and you have to play catch-up it’s very difficult.

"The one thing La Rochelle showed is they were there until the last play of the game and scored and won the game.

"I realised as long as we stayed in the fight, we’d be okay.

"When a team sees another team lose you get belief. If they had won the Champions Cup and the machine kept on rolling it would have been more difficult for us."

On how exactly they approached the game, the former World Cup-winning Springboks boss said: "You’ve got to make sure you don’t give them set-piece so we didn’t try to kick our way out, we kept the ball in-field.

"One of the ways they are very good is all their runaround plays, it’s very efficient and what they do from that is create momentum on second and third phases.

"Slowly, as we started to kick the ball we turned their lineout over as well."

Leinster captain James Ryan, who was sin-binned after a desperate attempt to stop a Bulls maul that ended with a penalty try, said: "Look, the Bulls were deserved winners.

"They were the better side on the day, there were moments