Jaden kick clinches Shield for Sharks in Durban nailbiter

Jaden Hendrikse made up for what could have been a costly mistake a minute earlier by milking a penalty and then kicking it with under six minutes remaining to enable the Hollywoodbets Sharks to edge out the Emirates Lions 25-22 at Hollywoodbets Kings Park on Saturday afternoon.

The win enabled the Sharks to leapfrog the DHL Stormers on the Shield log and win the trophy awarded to the local conference winners by one point, while the full house of log points means they remain comfortably in the top four bracket on the overall log of the United Rugby Championship as they head out of the derby phase and look forward to the arrivals of Zebre and Leinster over the next few weeks.

It was a hard fought win in a game of narrow margins and nothing summed that up better than Hendrikse, on as the reserve scrumhalf, hitting the upright with what looked like an easy kick. Fortunately it bounced inside off the crossbar to enable the Sharks to break a 22-all deadlock and take a lead with five minutes to go that they held onto until the end.

The mistake that Hendrikse made that could have been costly was his decision to take a quick tap from a kickable penalty in front of the posts. That attack ended with the Lions holding the Sharks up over the line as the two teams wrestled each other and their exhaustion in the Durban sauna-like conditions.

INGENUITY OR MISCHIEVOUS BUT PENALTY WAS AWARDED


But then came a moment of ingenuity from Hendrikse, or some would say mischief, as he passed the ball against a Lions player lying in a clearly offside position. It gave him a chance to atone for the earlier decision going against him as well as his miss of an easily kickable conversion of Nick Hatton’s try that drew the scores level after 68 minutes. It was a bad miss, but he had taken over the kicking duties from his brother Jordan, who had a mostly good day with his attacking game but was poor off the tee.

Hendrikse would have kicked himself if his mistakes late in the game had cost his team victory, but in truth the Sharks as a whole will have been kicking themselves for not making more of their superiority in the first half of a sweltering hot and humid day which was always going to conspire to change the type of game once it went deep.

In the first half it was a game played at ferocious pace and also let it be said with high skill levels considering the humidity would have rendered the ball slippery. Yes, there were errors, and also a lot of turnovers in the game, but we are talking relatively when we laud the skill levels and the running.

KOLISI WAS THE REAL DIFFERENCE

And while Morne van den Berg, the Lions scrumhalf, was again outstanding, no-one stood taller in terms of directing who was going to win it than the Sharks’ returning skipper Siya Kolisi. The Springbok captain was involved in both of the tries the Sharks scored late in the game in the 38-14 defeat in Johannesburg the week before, the second of which he scored himself, and in this game he turned in a performance that made one wonder if the result might have been different at Emirates Airlines Park had he started there instead of played off the bench.

In Durban he was involved in the first three Sharks tries in addition to producing a fantastic game all round and his inspiration might have been one of the reasons there was light years difference in the way the Sharks started this game in comparison with last week. In Johannesburg they appeared to lack energy at the start and were caught napping, but at Kings Park it was they who seized the early initiative and got their crowd buzzing in behind them.

The Lions did start off strongly enough in the first five minutes and had an early territory advantage, but the Sharks unleashed a brilliant attack from deep that saw Jorenzo Julius get the ball quickly to Kolisi who produced an excellent pass in the wide channels to send the pacy wing Yaw Penxe free down the right touchline. When he was challenged Penxe passed inside and Grant Williams was up to take it and go over in the right corner.

Hendrikse, Jordan that is, missed the conversion and was then responsible for the mistake that saw the Lions, his team, strike back immediately. The Sharks had set themselves up well for a good exit when they fielded the restart, but Hendrikse was guilty of looking up at his opponents as a perfectly fine pass crashed into his hands and then spilt out.

It meant the Lions had the scrum put-in in a perfect position near the Sharks’ posts and a great attack in which the depth of the attack was the key that saw fullback Tapiwa Mafura go over for a try that the Lions kicker Gianni Lombard did convert to give his team a 7-5 lead.

The Lions were emboldened by that and for a while, as they had in Johannesburg, they looked like the team that was breaching the gainline more. The Sharks were also guilty of early indiscipline as they conceded four penalties in the first quarter and they also had one misfire at the lineout.

SHARKS BACKS WERE IMPRESSIVE


But the Sharks were also dangerous every time they touched the ball, with inside centre Francois Venter turning in what was possibly his best game in a Sharks jersey to this point with ball in hand. Penxe was also a constant thorn in the opposing side as was Julius.

The Sharks though wasted some chances, such as in the 23rd minute when Vincent Koch popped up to intercept a Lions attack and it resulted in another counter attack that very nearly saw Penxe go over in the corner. There were a few other instances like that, the Sharks started to dominate possession as their pack gained the ascendancy, but they just couldn’t get across the line.

When they finally did it was Kolisi who crashed over near the posts after a succession of good Sharks scrums near the Lions line. It was one of those scenarios where there was so much pressure being applied that something had to break, and it did.

Hendrikse made no mistake this time from almost in front of the posts to make it 12-7 to the Sharks after 35 minutes. It should have been 15-7 when halftime arrived but Hendrikse missed an easy penalty that allowed the Lions to stay in the game.

It looked like they had gone into a lead they’d never relinquish when Kolisi scored his second try off an attacking lineout six minutes after the start of the second half. That meant it was the Sharks leading 17-7 and at that point they did look like they were taking control of the game and the expectation would have been for them to draw away.

But one thing you never do, particularly in a derby against the Sharks, is write off the Lions, and as the heat took toll on the players they began a thrilling fightback that was started by a Richard Kriel try in the 50th minute and then came a Lombard penalty that made it 17-15 to the Sharks.

Suddenly it was back to being anyone’s game and the Lions put themselves back in front when reserve hooker Franco Marais crashed over near the left corner flag in the 65th minute. Lombard kicked the conversion from the touchline to make it 22-17 to the visitors and at that point the Stormers, who started the weekend as Shield leaders, would have been preparing to receive the Shield trophy they won in the first two years of this competition.

LIONS MISTAKE AT RESTART COST THEM

That it wasn’t to be was because the Lions at the restart after the Marais try messed it up just like Hendrikse had after the first try of the game by knocking on near their posts. That gave the Sharks the field position that set up the Hatton try. Hendrikse’s missed conversion was inexplicable, similar in many ways to Clayton Blommetjies missing the attempted match winning conversion for the Stormers against the Bulls a few weeks ago.

Fortunately for him though he was able to make up for it as he kicked the penalty that secured his team another crucial five points to enable them to cement their position in the overall top four as well as to edge out the Stormers on the Shield log by a solitary point.

Scores

Hollywoodbets Sharks 25 - Tries: Siya Kolisi 2, Grant Williams and Nick Hatton; Conversion: Jordan Hendrikse; Penalty: Jaden Hendrikse.

Emirates Lions 22 - Tries: Tapiwa Mafura, Richard Kriel and Franco Marais; Conversions: Gianni Lombard 2; Penalty: Gianni Lombard.