But the coach wants his players to embrace the expectation and hype rather than have a fear of failure.

No one expected White to lead a Brumbies turnaround so quickly.

His first year in the job surprised everyone, including the South African, as the Brumbies fell agonisingly short of a finals berth.

Now add one of the world's best players in David Pocock, Clyde Rathbone's championship-winning experience and almost double the amount of Super Rugby caps and White's four-year journey appears on track.

All of a sudden the raw group of players thrown together to build a revival in the capital is regarded as a genuine title contender.

Now White says the challenge is to "let it happen on its own" and trust his players will go forward, not backwards.

"Everyone asks about the changes we're going to make this year, but the reality is you have to let it happen on its own and let the team develop," White said.

"What I'm looking forward to is seeing how quickly we can start from where we ended last year.

"What we don't want to do is go back four yards and start again. We want any momentum we had playing wise last season . . . we have to improve all of those little things.

"I think the pressure we have now is much easier to handle than when we started.

"The pressure we have now is expectation pressure and that's what everyone plays sport for – people expect big things from big teams."

The young Brumbies were the surprise of the competition last season.

The disaster of 2011 – the worst season in the club's history – meant expectations were low.

No one knew the players and no one expected them to be in finals contention.

But White built a simple game plan capable of taking on any team in the competition and the Brumbies were on the verge of a miraculous finals appearance until they choked in the last game of the season against the Auckland Blues.

That loss will be used as the fuel to avenge their last-round meltdown.

But the key to ensuring it becomes a positive, not a burden, is soaking up the pressure and using it as an advantage.

When White first took over the coaching reins and started his four-year plan to the top, he changed everything at Brumbyland.

New players, new coaches, new kitchen, new facilities and a vision for the future.

White's happy enough with the foundations and there won't be another overhaul.

But the thing that sets White apart is his desire to always be ahead of the pack. He wants to be the Super Rugby innovator.

His Danny Buderus collision coach experiment didn't even last one training session before the NRL stepped in and blocked the Newcastle Knights' captain from helping the Brumbies.

The unprecedented move of having a current NRL player help a rival code didn't come off.

But White refused to settle inside the box. Instead, he recruited rugby league coaching veteran Brian Smith to his staff.

"If you know where you want to end after four years, it's not a case of tinkering with things it's about knowing what you need to add to your program of where to get to," White said.

"Last year we probably jumped two or three steps quicker than most people expected, the challenge now is keeping that pace up or whether it's going to be a bit slower . . . it's exciting because no one knows.

"Sometimes fear drives you, the challenge is we've got to find that desperation and that drive even though there's the expectation of doing well. That's my job, that's what coaches are for.

"New ideas, innovation, adding to our program . . . we want to keep ahead of everyone else.

"If we don't make the finals we haven't achieved what we wanted. We coach and train every day because we want to win. And if we do everything we can, there's no chance why we can't beat everybody."

The Brumbies soldiered on last season despite being written off because of injuries and inexperience.

Playmakers Matt Toomua and Christian Lealiifano suffered season-ending injuries.

But the raw Brumbies of last season have almost doubled in experience.

They started the 2012 season with 486 Super Rugby caps in the squad. They've now got 840.

"We started something last year and we're still building towards a plan, but we want more success this year," backs coach and Brumbies great Stephen Larkham said.

"Everything is ahead of where we were last year, we've made progression and now it's just a matter of building our momentum in the season.

"Everyone can feel the expectation from the public, but we had the same finals expectation last year.

"Now it's about performing more consistently, we're not trying to change radically but we're trying to add tweaks and we feel we're on the right path."