If there is one thing that should not need pointing out, it is that when you go to the highveld and fail to pitch up mentally, you can get smashed.
Even the best teams, like last year’s Vodacom United Rugby champions, have learned that. The Emirates Lions thrashed the Glasgow Warriors 44-21, but a few weeks later their opponents won the competition.
The fact that the Warriors were able to come back and win a final against the Vodacom Bulls at Loftus, where they had also lost in that same tour where they were routed by the Lions, might provide some small consolation to the Hollywoodbets Sharks. But they should be kicking themselves for having to absorb a lesson they really shouldn’t have needed in Johannesburg this past weekend.
No-one will deny that the Lions, like they were against Glasgow last May, were good. They played the conditions perfectly, camping in Sharks territory for much of the game. That was where the platform for their 38-14 win, where the Durban side was frankly lucky to get 14, was laid.
FAILED TO PITCH
But it is also hard to disagree with their coach John Plumtree’s contention that the Sharks did what he feared they would and which he was warning them against throughout the buildup week.
They just failed to pitch, something that was evident from a very early stage of the game, where they appeared to lack energy and drive in a manner that was redolent of the up and down days under the coaching of Robert du Preez. Remember those days? There were times back then when you could tell after five minutes whether the Sharks were there or had gone walkabout. This was one of those.
The current Sharks head coach was all too aware of the danger of that happening, as it sometimes can when you’ve done what many consider to be near impossible by beating the Bulls at Loftus when down on numbers. When he spoke up the Lions as a dangerous team and one that should be hugely respected for its ability to hurt you at the team announcement last week, Plumtree wasn’t doing it just for the media and public’s benefit.
He was trying to get it through to his players too. Sometimes, though, you can talk as much as you like, if your players feel they are facing a lesser hurdle than one they have just overcome, then it is only once they are hit full force that they wake up.
And by the time the Sharks woke up in Johannesburg they were 14-0 down, the rain was pouring and that was a huge deficit in the conditions. They had to play catch-up from there and it just made the Lions’ dominance more complete as the coastal team made error after error on a day when, unlike at Loftus, there might have been more fear of failure than hunger to win. They were easy prey for hyped-up opponents who executed their game-plan with power and precision.
“We let ourselves down and our fans will be disappointed. This just shows that despite having had a good week of preparation physically, we did not nail it mentally,” said Plumtree afterwards.
“To try and win a derby game away, you have to get the mental buildup right. The boys will understand that after this.”
THEIR CAPTAIN WOULD HAVE KNOWN WHAT WAS COMING
Plumtree is right if he is implying it is a timely lesson for his players to absorb but it shouldn’t have been needed. The Lions won 40-10 against the Sharks at Emirates Airline Park in the corresponding game last season, and while they reversed that in the Currie Cup final and have also won some big games against the Bulls in Pretoria since then, there were enough players who should have had memories of that experience against the Lions as well as the thrashing they took from the Bulls in November 2023.
For those players who weren’t there, they had a captain who could have warned them. Vincent Tshituka was a Lions player himself for a long time, he knows the Johannesburg team’s psyche.
The Emirates Lions and the DHL Stormers are fighting in the #VURC 😤 pic.twitter.com/GRQ6oB8A2v
— SuperSport Rugby (@SSRugby) March 3, 2025
Indeed, Tshituka was the key Lions player in another of the famous derby days in their history - the big win over the Stormers in Cape Town in 2021. It was a one-sided game, at least on the scoreboard, and for a long time that was the Stormers’ only defeat in a URC derby.
Yet like Glasgow did last year after their chastening Johannesburg experience, they went on to win the competition. So the portents aren’t all bad for the Sharks. They may have become victims of the hype that enveloped them after winning at Loftus understrength two weeks ago and guilty of believing their own press.
A LONG COMPETITION MEANS THERE WILL BE THE ODD BLEMISH
But their fans that give them grief on social media need to have some perspective too, for the URC is not a competition where many teams go through a league season without blemish.
In fact, runaway log leaders Leinster are on their own in that regard, and it is a measure of the competitiveness of the URC that in this latest round Leinster were the only top-six team to win. Glasgow faltered against the Ospreys, the Bulls against the Stormers and Munster against Edinburgh, with all of those losses being suffered by the home teams. So as it turns out, the Sharks didn’t lose much ground.
They are lucky they are playing the team that thrashed them again in just a few days' time, for it will be an opportunity for them to witness something else that no professional sportsman should need to have pointed out to him - the fickleness of supporters and the way emotion can swing this way and that in a short space of time.
Win on Saturday and the Sharks will win the URC Shield for the first time. It has been confirmed they just need to win, for they will have then won more games than the Stormers, which will come into it as a tie breaker should the Sharks win without a bonus point and end level on points with their Cape rivals.
But if they pick up a full house of log points, they will also close the lead that second-placed Glasgow currently have on them to five and on the Bulls to two, with everyone finally on the same number of games played - 12.
A DURBAN WIN WILL ERASE MEMORY OF JOBURG
The way they won in Pretoria and the way they lost in Johannesburg suggests they are a team that is best when their backs are to the wall. They will have their backs to the wall on Saturday and if that translates into the response that Plumtree hopes for, the usual amnesia will set in and their supporters will forget Johannesburg.
The #VURC SA Shield is heading to Cape Town as it stands after the weekend..
— SuperSport Rugby (@SSRugby) March 3, 2025
But if the Sharks beat the Lions with a bonus point, it will head to Durban 👀 pic.twitter.com/ABo7yVs2F6
Bulls director of rugby Jake White said after his team lost to the Stormers that it was no train smash, and he was right, and it was the same for the Sharks 60 kilometres away earlier in the day. In an 18-game competition there will be hiccups. It only becomes a calamity if it happens again and again, and if there is a concern for the Sharks, it is how comprehensively they do sometimes blow out on their off days.
They aren’t a team that should be conceding 38 points to the Lions. There again, Glasgow surely shouldn’t have been conceding 44 last season either, so maybe it does need to be accepted what can happen if you aren’t completely mentally ready against the Lions. The Stormers arguably shouldn’t be losing to the Lions either, but on their most recent visit to Emirates Airline Park they were 24-6 down at halftime.