Having so many Boks is problematic for the Sharks

At the time, it seemed like a big moment in the game and Hollywoodbets Sharks coach John Plumtree confirmed it afterwards, his team fell short in their Vodacom United Rugby Championship semifinal mainly because they failed to score against 13 men before halftime.

Much like the Springboks when they thwarted a sustained multiple-phase attack by England shortly before halftime of the 2019 Rugby World Cup final in Yokohama, the Vodacom Bulls will have had their confidence significantly boosted when they held the Sharks out.

The Loftus semifinal might have been a very different game had the Bulls not defended wave after wave of Bulls attack near their line when they had Cameron Hanekom and Marcell Coetzee in the bin.

“We had plenty of opportunities to score before halftime,” said Plumtree at the post match press conference.

“We put the Bulls under pressure and they got three yellow cards, but we weren’t good enough. We should have been closer to 15-all (rather than 15-3 down) at halftime, but we didn’t cash in close to the line. We got held up over the goalline just before halftime which was an absolute disaster.”

It was, as it is reasonable to assume that the Sharks, who have been a good second-half team this season and have chased down deficits, might have gone on to win had they scored then. But they didn’t, and instead, it is the Bulls who are heading to Loftus while most of the Sharks starting team, because they are Springboks, will be heading off to join the national training squad.

HAVING MARQUEE PLAYERS HAS A DOWN SIDE

And there in a nutshell might be the reason the Sharks have fallen short of their goal of picking up silverware this season. Having Bok marquee players on your books isn’t all positive, and the fact of the matter is that Plumtree wasn’t able to have a much needed wash-up to the season with his key players and he probably won’t be seeing them again until after the Bok tour in November.

Plumtree has lamented the fact he wasn’t able to have a proper full squad pre-season for his players this year and he won’t have one before next season either because of South Africa’s commitment to the southern hemisphere season at international level while it is the northern season the clubs/franchises are aligned to.

It might be a good reason for the Sharks to take a revised look at their contracting model going forward, something that may well be happening anyway. Sharks director or rugby Neil Powell, in a recent interview with supersport.com about the Sharks’ new Junior High Performance Centre, spoke about the new emphasis on developing young talent so the Sharks can contract “from the bottom and not just the top”.

IT ISN’T COMMITMENT LACKING

That’s not to denigrate the great contribution made by some Boks to the Sharks’ cause, not the least of those Andre Esterhuizen, who has been a consummate professional since returning from a few seasons with English club Harlequins. It’s not about the Sharks Boks not being committed, it is about what is possible at this time where they are playing the Castle Lager Rugby Championship while the northern hemisphere internationals are resting and playing in the URC/Champions Cup when their All Blacks adversaries are in their off-season.

One of Plumtree’s most memorable quotes of the season came in Cape Town after his team had lost out to a late try against the Stormers - “The players are not robots”. In other words, they are human and need proper rest opportunities, and a window in the year when they can refresh and then rebuild themselves to be ready for the next season. There is no season here.

When it comes to their game, obviously the Sharks, as highlighted by Plumtree in looking back at the specifics of this 25-15 defeat, need to be able to convert opportunities more than they do. It would be fascinating to look at the stats related to how much time they spend in the opposition 22 without coming away with points. They should really have beaten Leinster in Durban, a day where they dominated possession and territory but just couldn’t score.

NO COINCIDENCE THEY WERE GOOD IN OCTOBER

Siya Kolisi, captain of the Boks but only of the Sharks when Eben Etzebeth is absent because of injury, which unfortunately this season he has been way too often, confirmed an impression when in a press conference last week he highlighted how differently the Sharks appeared to be playing back in late October and into early December.

“We had some great performances in the URC then and in the early parts of the Champions Cup,” said Kolisi.

And he’s right. They still had some growing to do, but there was nothing wrong with the Sharks’ attacking game, it looked like it was building, when they beat Glasgow Warriors and Munster in Durban in late October before following up with good performances against the DHL Stormers and Exeter Chiefs in late November/early December.

It may not be a coincidence that those performances came just before the Boks were going on their overseas tour in the Glasgow and Munster cases, and they were still on their A game after winning the Rugby Championship, and had just returned from tour when they played the Stormers and Exeter.

They were in the groove then, but then came the injuries, then also came the disruption to continuity caused by Plumtree having to juggle time off for so many of his players as per the Bok resting protocols. The best attack is produced by teams that play together continuously and often.

The Sharks don’t get to build that continuity and they don’t get a proper pre-season together. That is something that needs to be kept in mind by those that look at the team sheet and say “Ah, they have so many Boks, so they should win.”

Wrong. 

Until there is a global season or an adjustment to what SA rugby is aligned to, having too many Boks brings its own problems and it’s one of the reasons that so many of the Sharks are at the national training camp today rather than in Dublin building up for a URC Grand Final.