Hollywoodbets Sharks coach John Plumtree was just short of being apoplectic in his rage at how his team departed from the script to nearly lose to Zebre in Durban at the weekend and he warned that it won’t cut it against Leinster - yet that warning was probably unnecessary.
While Plumtree, who was more performance orientated than outcome directed in the post-match press conference at Hollywoodbets Kings Park, was right to be angry and frustrated at the naive rugby his team produced that so nearly cost them the game, the Sharks will have an intrinsic, innate understanding they need to be much more on their game against Leinster. Just because it is Leinster.
With all respect to Zebre, they are just Zebre, and while they have performed much better this season, they still rank 15th on the log. It is easy to underestimate them, and when you race into a 14-0 lead after 11 minutes, isn’t it quite easy to assume that it is going to be an easy game and you start looking at the number of points you might put on rather than the actual result?
That might be particularly so when your team is loaded with Springbok stars who have won multiple World Cups and have crossed rugby’s ultimate horizon. For those players, a match against Zebre, no matter the result, will just never feature on the post-career individual highlights reel.
SLOPPINESS STARTED WHEN THEY WENT AHEAD
Which puts those players in a dangerous position because Zebre have shown this season the folly of taking them likely, and are evolving into a pretty decent team. They remain 15th after the weekend result, but they are just six points off the top eight.
It may not be coincidental that the Sharks’ first moment of sloppiness, their first of many, came immediately after Jurenzo Julius had crossed for his team’s second try. That put them 14-0 up and until then they had all the momentum.
You could almost sense the team thinking “This is just Zebre, this is going to be a cake-walk” when Zebre capitalised on an error and win Alessandro Gesi went in for his team’s first try.
The so-called Latin temperament that makes teams from countries like Italy, Argentina and France dangerous if you give them a sniff then clicked in, and from there it was a mighty tussle for the Sharks, who didn’t help themselves by being so loose.
Loose play is often symptomatic of a team that thinks they can win by a big margin, and it presents gifts to alert opposition. On the day, Zebre were super-alert. The 50/22 they created with a fly hack pretty much summed up their day. A lot went for them, they were good at intercepts and picking up scraps.
SHARKS SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN GIFTING THOSE SCRAPS
The Sharks were spectacularly poor at figuring out that they shouldn’t be presenting Zebre with scraps if they just kept the ball longer within the forward blanket. And that kicking long onto the excellent Zebre fullback and captain Geronimo Prisciantelli was the height of folly.
The Sharks’ aerial game was all over the place, and their tactics worked against their big forwards, who found themselves having to put in a big running shift on a day which wasn’t as humid as it is from November through to the end of February in Durban but was stiflingly hot.
It won’t be quite as stiflingly hot on Saturday against Leinster as the game is kicking off at 19.15. Which in this part of the world at this time of the year feels like late night because the sun goes down so early.
But it will also be Leinster the Sharks will be playing against, a Leinster stung by their loss in Pretoria and also possibly strengthened by returning cavalry, and that means their minds will be tighter. The loose thinking that translates into loose rugby won’t be there.
CONCERNS
Still, it should be a concern to Plumtree that there was the departure from the script he hinted at, and not for the first time in recent seasons we heard him talk about the need to have “a good honest look at ourselves on Monday”.
“It’s going to take a while to digest that performance and it just shows you that no matter who you play against, if your skill sets are poor and you can’t build pressure with the ball, win the aerial battles and dominate the kicking game, it’s going to be a long day at the office,” said Plumtree after a game won 35-34 by Jordan Hendrikse’s angled conversion of Ethan Hooker’s late try.
“It doesn’t get much uglier than today’s performance. We can’t take credit away from Zebre, they’ve been great this season. They were dangerous and their fullback was unreal. You have to be careful, there are no easy games in this competition. In the middle of the park we weren’t good enough today.
"The kicking today was poor. We weren’t winning our contestable kicks and that hurt us. We made it easy for them. Our skills were terrible and that nearly cost us the game.”
HOOKER SHOULD BE A WING FOR NOW
Plumtree went on to talk about combinations not clicking on the day, and the smart money should be on Hooker moving from centre back to wing. The Westville old boy is a highly promising midfielder, but on Saturday it was evident that he might take a while to develop the skill sets required for the position.
If he ends up serving an apprenticeship on the wing before moving to centre he won’t be the first to have done it. The great Jean de Villiers wore No 11 on his back for a long time at Bok level before he finally became the regular No 12 and the Stormers’ Suleiman Hartzenberg, also a centre currently playing wing, is on a similar journey to the one Hooker is on.
The hamstring injury to Henry Immelman means the Sharks need a replacement at fullback. Immelman was carried away on a golf cart in the second half and it looks like his loan period at the Sharks (from the Bulls) is now completed. It is probable he would not have played against Leinster even if he was fit, because he was a weak link in the Sharks’ armour against Zebre.
With Aphelele Fassi still a few weeks away from being ready to play, we could see Jordan Hendrikse move to fullback, with Siya Masuku at flyhalf, against Leinster. Lukhanyo Am could return from injury this week and Andre Esterhuizen made his return off the bench against Leinster so the Sharks are well covered in the midfield so it would make sense for Hooker to shift to wing.