It is a cycle or sequence their supporters will be heartily sick of, that of winning one week and then rebounding the next, or vice-versa, but that is exactly what is needed from the Hollywoodbets Sharks when they face the Emirates Lions on Saturday.
In fact, it is the same story for the Lions supporters heading into the early afternoon shoot-out at Hollywoodbets Kings Park that will decide the South African Shield in the 2024/2025 edition of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship. For the Lions fans, and the Lions themselves, there’s been much more of a Groundhog Day element to their past few seasons, with the team scoring a resounding victory one week and then it turns out the following week they flattered only to deceive.
It happened to the Lions after they beat the Stormers quite comprehensively in Johannesburg three weeks ago. The next game was against the Vodacom Bulls in Pretoria. Admittedly, they were playing away, but they should still feel that they were way too short of the form they showed against the Cape team seven days earlier.
Which does actually cue a point - for the Sharks, Saturday’s game will be their second in succession. For the Lions it will be their fourth, a sequence that started with that game against the Stormers. Will the Lions be negatively impacted by having played three tough derbies in a row heading into this one?
The Sharks will be hoping so, and they could also be getting some fresh players back. Siya Kolisi made his return from his break by playing off the bench last week. He should start this week. And the Sharks may have some other top players back as they leave the month of February, which coach John Plumtree always consigned as the one where his Springboks would get their mandatory rest, behind them.
ENOUGH WITH THE REVERSALS IN FORM
What it adds up to is there being no excuses this time, particularly as they will be playing at home in front of a Durban rugby faithful that has started to believe again but then keeps getting affronted by sudden and completely unexpected reversals in form. Such as last week’s 38-14 defeat that had followed on from a momentous, against-the-odds win against the Bulls in Pretoria.
All of which led to Sharks wing Yaw Penxe’s online press conference sounding jarringly familiar.
“As players, we had a proper look at ourselves and our game, individually and as a unit. We know where we went wrong and have been working on it the past couple of days,” said Penxe.
You could easily imagine that the clock has been rewound when you hear or read that and imagine that we are back reliving the period when Gary Gold, Robert du Preez or Sean Everitt were the coaches.
The contracting has improved since then and the culture is better, so punters should feel much more comfortable predicting a proper rebound performance at the weekend. It was easy to see in Johannesburg that the Lions had been caught cold, even though that is hardly an excuse given that their coach John Plumtree had spent the whole week warning of the perils that awaited them.
“When the Lions were in our half and inside our 22, we weren’t as physical as we would like to have been,” said Penxe,
“The second big point (that counted against us) was our kicking game. We had a couple of inaccurate kicks that hurt us. And our skill set as well, we gave away a couple of turnovers that put us straight back in our half.”
EARLY DEFICIT WAS NOOSE AROUND THE NECK
The second part of that is easily explainable. When you are chasing a game in wet weather, you will make mistakes. The early deficit the Sharks conceded to the Lions compounded the situation they found themselves in and when they were 14-0 down after as many minutes and the rain started to fall heavily onto Emirates Airline Park, it was a noose tightening around their necks.
“If you lose that first 20 minutes it gets into the players’ heads and the team loses confidence. So we’d really like to get a better start than we did last week,” said the 27-year-old who first made a name for himself and briefly attracted the attention of the national coach when he was playing for the Southern Kings.
But the memories are fresh, which is why it shouldn’t happen again and why the smart money should be on the Lions repeating their own trend of losing after an emphatic win.
“It definitely helps playing the same team again; you’re essentially getting a second chance a week later, which doesn’t happen often. So hopefully we can right our wrongs this weekend.”