Challenge Cup ‘respite’ could help Sharks 'become a team'

There hasn’t been much coming out of Hollywoodbets Sharks country this week, but the words of coach John Plumtree still ring in the silence that has followed last Saturday’s defeat in Pretoria - “…but clearly, we’re still not a team yet”.

To be fair, no neutral would have given the Sharks much chance of going to Loftus in the big Vodacom United Rugby Championship derby and winning.

Not when it is a 3pm kick-off in December, there is 34 degree heat at altitude, and when the visiting team is in a different space in terms of development than their opponents, the Vodacom Bulls are.

Yes, there’d been that big win over the Dragons the week before and everyone even remotely connected to Sharks rugby was almost duty bound to get excited about it for it was the first win in six starts in the URC.

But just as the Sharks were never going to win on a December afternoon at Loftus, so the Dragons were never going to win on a humid late November evening in Durban.

The only real debate ahead of that game was what the winning margin might be.

In the end, it was a little bit more than might have been expected, but we’re talking degrees of difference, small ones.

Once it became clear the Sharks were going to win, the Dragons players rolled over in a heap and it was a case of open gates for the home team.

In truth, if there was a semblance of a statement performance from the Sharks this season, it came in defeat to Connacht the week before.

The Sharks should never have lost that game, and people who didn’t get a crystal clear view from that performance what the coach is trying to do, and don’t see that there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel for a franchise that has struggled ever since Pumtree was shown the door 10 years ago, couldn’t have been watching.

COACH NOT IN CHARGE OF PLAYERS HE CONTRACTED

What let the Sharks down in that game was inexperience, remember the Boks weren’t playing, and like in other games, the way it went mirrored why Plumtree’s second stint as Sharks coach hasn’t got off to the flyer many had hoped for - he had no hand in contracting the players who are playing for him at present.

And contracting is a problem at the Sharks, it has been their main problem for a long time.

At the start of his stint, after taking over from Robert du Preez, Sean Everitt had his own players, the ones he had coached through age-group level, playing for him and playing the game he wanted from them.

But that changed later with a raft of signings that didn’t fit the pattern and the culture, and before that, dating back to 2013, it was difficult to correlate players signed with the intent of the coach - remembering of course that Jake White was only in Durban for one Super Rugby season.

BULLS GOOD EXAMPLE OF THE BENEFIT OF ALIGNMENT

The team that conquered the Sharks at Loftus this past weekend are an example of what comes from the alignment of coach with contracting.

The Bulls are White’s team and the former Springbok coach has clearly done good off-season business.

The Stormers, the most successful local team in the first two years of the URC, are clearly John Dobson’s team too.

Manie Libbok moved from Durban to Cape Town to confirm the vision that Dobson had for him and he has fulfilled the role that Dobson imagined him fulfilling.

Plumtree hit bulls eye with some of his contracting in his first stint as Sharks coach.

An example was when they were all up a gumtree at flyhalf one season and then up stepped Frenchman Frederik Michalak.

The Sharks have money, and those who dream of Curwin Bosch ever becoming the world class pivot they need are doing just that, dreaming, so maybe it’s time for Plumtree to do something similar.

It’s a pity that Owen Farrell, who recently decided to take a break from international rugby and probably wouldn’t mind getting away from his haters in England for a bit, loves his club, Saracens, so much.

He’s the kind of experienced flyhalf with an ingrown love of winning and hatred of losing that the Sharks probably need.

COULD PROFIT FROM LAST SEASON’S FAILURE

We understand Plumtree has plans for the future around recruitment but for now he has to make do with what he has.

And in that sense, the big failure of last season, which was not making it into the Investec Champions Cup, might provide some help.

The Sharks are playing in the secondary European competition, the Challenge Cup, this season rather than the main deal.

Perhaps that’s why there been a media silence out of Durban this week - the Challenge Cup doesn’t hold the same prestige as the Champions Cup, and while it does present the Sharks with a chance to get hold of some much needed silverware, as the level of the competition isn’t high, it also presents a chance to build something under a less intense glare.

The Sharks host the French team, Pau, at Hollywoodbets Kings Park in their first game in the competition on Saturday, and then travel to Bloemfontein to play the Toyota Cheetahs.

Guess who's back 😎

World Player of the Year nominee Eben Etzebeth and a whole host of @Springboks' World Cup winners return for @SharksRugby this weekend 😍#ChallengeCupRugby #BKTURC

— EPCR Challenge Cup (@ChallengeCup_) November 24, 2023

With respect to those teams, it is not quite the same as facing a Munster, Racing 92 or Toulouse, and this does present a chance for Plumtree to hurry up his team’s progress towards what he says they are yet to become, meaning “a team”, without quite the same pressure.

The next really high pressure game for the Sharks, and the next URC game full stop, is the coastal derby against the Stormers the night before New Year’s Eve (30 December).

Unlike the Stormers they will not be working the week building up to Christmas, and their opponents could just be feeling the effects of a sequence of games that features Leicester Tigers, LaRochelle and the Bulls in successive weeks before then.

It’s not quite a second off-season but there should be space for Plumtree to use the coming Challenge Cup games as a development opportunity for his team and an opportunity to refocus and start afresh once the games are behind them.

They will need to be strong when they return to URC action because with six losses in seven starts their chances of making the top eight and Champions Cup qualification, which must surely be the main focus now, are rapidly diminishing.