Sold a dummy: Jake White accuses SA Rugby and co of false promises after URC travel dramas

Bulls mentor Jake White hopes Qatar Airways' three-year sponsorship agreement with the United Rugby Championship (URC) and SA Rugby rights what he sees as a false vision sold to South African players and coaches.

One of the major selling points to franchises for joining the northern hemisphere in late 2020 was that players wouldn't be subjected to the arduous travel requirements that dogged local teams' Super Rugby participation.

However, in an innocuous yet startling revelation, the former World Cup-winning Springbok coach suggested that the commercial partnership, announced on Tuesday, became imperative because there was little material difference to the ease of travel.

In fact, it started bordering on becoming worse because SA Rugby Travel, the governing body's official travel agency and central overseas booking agent for the franchises, had to book economy class flights with various stopovers owing to cost challenges in a severely disrupted air travel market due to Covid-19.

Incidentally, the Bulls felt the full brunt of the problem ahead of last season's final against the Stormers in Cape Town, when their preparation for the showpiece was cut by one day because of delays flying back from Dublin via Doha after memorably beating Leinster in a semi-final.

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"The one area we had to sharpen up on was the travel. To fly around the world to get to Europe is not ideal and doing so in economy class wasn't ideal either," White said after he was queried on the lessons learnt in the inaugural edition of the tournament.

"One of the sells to the players was that when we moved on from Super Rugby - even with business class to Sydney - you wouldn’t be that