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The Brumbies have been rocked overnight by the departure of head coach Jake White, less than two months after guiding the two-time Super Rugby champions to this year’s final.
He still had another two years left to run on his four-year contract with the Canberra-based club.
Twitter exploded with the news around 8:30pm last night, and both Chris Dutton from The Canberra Times and Tim Gavel from the ABC confirmed the news around half an hour later, that White had indeed asked for a release from his contract early.
The Brumbies were said to be working through a resolution on the matter with White, but look set to grant White’s request for “personal reasons”.
White has been back in South Africa since the conclusion for the Super Rugby season, and he had previously made no secret that he would spend some time back in the Republic scouting for potential Brumbies recruits.
Numerous reports suggested White was going to meet with the Brumbies contingent within the Wallabies when they arrive in Cape Town ahead of this weekend’s Test Match at Newlands against South Africa.
Fox Sports rugby presenter Nick McArdle told Fox Sports News last night that Brumbies skipper and Wallabies no.8 Ben Mowen was trying to contact White, to urge him to reconsider his request for a release, but both McArdle and Gavel have also suggested there appears little chance of that happening.
Gavel tweeted later that White “wants to stay in South Africa for personal reasons and is not keen to return to Canberra.”
While White and his wife relocated to Canberra, their two sons remained at home in Cape Town while studying at university.
Unconfirmed reports have White eyeing off coaching roles with the Stormers, while a role in Durban was mentioned in reports coming out of South Africa.
Speculation was rife that White’s disappointment in being overlooked for the Wallabies coaching role has played a part in his decision, and this would not surprise me at all.
White told me in the days following that he was incredibly annoyed at missing out on the Wallabies job, particularly since the ARU had approached him to put something together as far back as February.
He was annoyed that after being sounded out personally, and with the ARU knowing full well of his philosophies and approaches to rugby, that they would then ignore all their reasons for making their approach and instead appoint Ewen McKenzie primarily because he was a local.
White had made no secret of his desire to coach internationally again, and it was only last year that he was heavily linked to the then-vacant England job, eventually taken on by Stuart Lancaster, who had been in a caretaker role.
The Brumbies were on the way to a complete rebirth as a Super Rugby force, and admitted in the lead-up to the decider in early August that he had reached the final twelve months ahead of his own expectations.
After taking on a Brumbies side that was a shadow of former glories at the start of the 2012 season, he completely rebuilt the playing group, brought in new assistant coaches and former Brumbies greats in Stephen Larkham and Laurie Fisher, and head-hunted renowned athletic performance coach, Dean Benton, who set about building the Brumbies into the fittest team in Super Rugby.
Despite numerous coaches trying and failing before him, White ensured all Brumbies players relocated to Canberra full time, and played in the local ACT Rugby John I Dent Cup competition.
The move was beginning to bear fruit already, with several local players expected to win EPS contracts in 2014.
On the field, the Brumbies stripped their gameplan back to a very simple territory game in 2012, and added a ruthless competitiveness at the breakdown in 2013, to the point that the Brumbies were the most penalised team in Super Rugby, and were widely pilloried for what was viewed as systemic cynical infringing in their own 22 this season.
White leaving two years early will be a devastating blow to the club, and particularly the playing group, but also to the wider Brumbies Rugby region. He made himself the ‘face’ of the club, was very much committed to returning the club to what he knew as the one of the very best rugby teams in the world.
He was deliberate in bringing back the great names, and very happily ran with the ‘Back to the Future’ theme that I put to him when I first spoke to him in August 2011.
He was intent on creating “the best rugby program in Australia” in Canberra, something he had to do as a point of difference to the bright lights and/or impressive beaches in the other four Super Rugby cities.
That point of difference netted David Pocock at the start of the 2013 season.
Personally, I came to know White reasonably well, and his departure will be disappointing not just for the obvious reasons, but for the fact that he was also so giving with his time to me and the small band of Canberra rugby media.
There were times that we walked out of press conferences knowing we’d been played, but White was always more than willing to provide a quote.
I’ll forever be indebted to White for granting me the unprecedented access he did, in allowing me to shadow him on the night of the Brumbies’ historic win over the touring British and Irish Lions side.
He’d never let a journo or writer follow him on matchday in his entire coaching career.
I’ll be particularly disappointed if he doesn’t return to Canberra, simply because he was going to autograph my feature article – which he heavily re-tweeted and promoted – and the matchday program for me.
And I owe him a beer.
More than anything, though, White enjoyed talking about rugby, and it was nothing for a ten-minute chat to be still going half an hour later. It was impossible not to learn something new each time.
Larkham is the early favourite to assume the head coach role, and that would seem to make sense.
Fisher has spoken of a desire to be a head coach again, but also loves being able to focus just on the breakdown, as he was doing under White’s regime.
This will be a big blow for the Brumbies, but their measure of a club now may not be through what White began for them, but how they build upon his foundations.
Their new era starts today.