SS
Jake White
DobsonIt didn’t work out for White in Durban though. Although the Sharks won the South African conference for the first time under his guidance, his hard-nosed winning-is-everything pragmatism saw the Sharks employ a conservative playing strategy that did not go down well with the Kings Park faithful. Officially White resigned from that job, but he was really pushed.
At the Sharks he was unpopular with the players because he decided to shake them up by introducing an office type 9-to-5 environment, with the players required to be at the Sharks headquarters even when they weren’t training.
One of those disgruntled players though later told me that while White wasn’t liked, there was no doubt he was a good rugby coach, and that same player later followed him to Montpellier.
. It isn’t a secret that the Sharks put out feelers to him before he signed the deal with the Stormers in 2019, and it would have been a good move for him at that time given how bleak the WP outlook was.
Those who know him though will tell you about the passion he has for rugby in the region, something handed down through the gene pool by his late father Paul, a former top referee and much-loved Cape rugby man.
Like White at the Bulls, Dobson’s success at the Stormers hasn’t just come down to the environment he has created, but also to his shrewd contracting. Many would have raised their eyebrows when Dobson announced he was recruiting Manie Libbok to play flyhalf, but he made it clear why Libbok was coming to the Cape - and the player has delivered on that attacking rugby promise.
Sorry Ox. 
