The statement-making continued for the Hollywoodbets Sharks on Saturday night, as they scored a 15-3 Vodacom URC win over Munster at a damp Thomond Park in Limerick that propelled them into the top five on the log and completed a clean sweep on their three-match overseas tour.
Not many teams, certainly from South Africa, go to the Munster home ground and win, so this was another performance to be noted, with fullback Zekhethelo Siyaya scoring a brilliant try amidst a couple of sublime X-factor moments from the 19-year-old. While Siyaya was a deserved man of the match, the real standout for the Sharks was their defensive effort, and you know what they say about defence demonstrating attitude.
Certainly, this Sharks team seems far removed from the Durban sides who have carried question marks over commitment and work ethic in recent years, and the burning desire to win that was shown in their brave defence, particularly near their line, particularly in the first half, was another indicator of the progress in culture development that has been made under JP Pietersen.
They started their tour with an EPCR Challenge Cup win over Lyon in France two weeks ago and have followed up with successive URC wins over first Cardiff and now Munster. Both those latter games were played at venues where visiting teams seldom win; both of them were achieved by more than a score.
Their winning surge that has followed their one setback against the DHL Stormers in Cape Town three weeks ago has propelled them into the top four of the log, where they are level on log points with Edinburgh and two points adrift of the joint second-placed South African pair of the Vodacom Bulls and Stormers. They are nominally ahead of Edinburgh by virtue of a superior points difference, so it means there are three local teams in the top four.
The Limerick game wasn’t the most enjoyable watch if you were looking for entertaining ball-in-hand running rugby, but then it was never going to be, given the conditions. What the Sharks did effectively was put together a better kicking game than their opponents, which was crucial on the night.
Not that Munster didn’t have some territory, and at one stage of the first half, they had 71 per cent territorial dominance. They started the game camping on the Sharks’ line, and that is where the Sharks’ determined defensive effort was to the fore in keeping them out.
They certainly looked not just extremely committed but also well organised defensively, and that was very much why they were able to rely on a try set up by fullback Siyaya to give them a narrow 5-3 lead when they could easily have been behind.
SIYAYA TRY WAS A GEM
That Siyaya try was a gem. It came in the 14th minute, with Siyaya breaking apart what up to then was a tight arm-wrestle, with both teams taking turns to attack the opposition line mainly through forward drives from close range. Siyaya, schooled at Westville Boys High, the same as his Sharks teammate and Bok utility back Ethan Hooker, kicked through and then showed his pace. He should have scored himself, but instead the kick bounced for flyhalf Lombard to dot down.
Lombard missed the conversion, so when JJ Hanrahan, the Munster flyhalf, elected to kick a three-pointer two minutes from halftime, it was a two-point game, with the visitors leading 5-3. However, that Munster decided to kick for poles at that point was a statement of its own - it said they were losing confidence in their chances of being able to breach the Sharks’ defence.
And that is how it stayed for the rest of the match, with Siyaya really the only player on either side that made significant inroads on attack. In fact, he should have had two tries in the first half, and just needed to control the ball better on the line, where an unlucky bounce struck his thigh and bounced forward over the dead-ball area when he looked almost certain to score a carbon copy try of the one earlier rounded off by Lombard.
FORWARDS TOOK SYSTEMATIC CONTROL
Whereas the Sharks’ defence was their pillar in the first half, as the game wore on, their forwards came more and more into their own, even though they ended up playing the game without perhaps their most influential loose-forward of recent weeks, Matt Ramao, who was a late withdrawal and was replaced by Tino Mavesere on the flank.
The Sharks’ set piece became more and more dominant as the game wore on, not just the scrum but also at lineout time against a Munster team that has struggled in that phase all season. The Sharks did suffer what looked like a significant setback in the 56th minute when Springbok loosehead prop Ox Nche was yellow-carded for a head-contact hit.
He was sent to the bunker, and the Irish commentators were expecting it to be upgraded to a red, but it was correctly ruled that there was the mitigating factor of Nche’s head contact coming after contact with the chest.
It was when the Durbanites were down to 14 men that the Sharks scored what was effectively their match-winning try, with inspirational No 8 and captain Nick Hatton surging down the right flank off a great offload in the tackle and reserve scrumhalf Ivan van Zyl was up to finish off in the corner.
Lombard, who’d earlier re-established the Sharks’ five-point lead when he kicked a penalty from the tee in the 54th minute, converted from the touchline and with the Sharks pack becoming systematically more dominant, Munster losing their discipline and the visiting defence always so impregnable, there was never going to be a way back for the hosts.
Scores
Hollywoodbets Sharks - Tries: Gianni Lombard and Ivan van Zyl; Conversion: Gianni Lombard; Penalty: Gianni Lombard.
Munter - Penalty: JJ Hanrahan.