Cell C Sharks coach Joey Mongalo hinted after his team lost to DHL Western Province in their final Carling Currie Cup league game that there won’t be any scarring ahead of Saturday’s semifinal against the Airlink Pumas, but is it as simple as that?
Mongalo brought several of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship frontline players back for the trip to Cape Town, where the Sharks were hammered 44-5 by a WP team that knew it was playing its last game on the season and was determined to finish off their campaign with a flourish. Mongalo rightly suggested afterwards that 14 changes to the team was too many, and he appeared to give an indication that he would return to the team that has done the business for the Sharks throughout the domestic season for the playoffs.
But what were the Sharks playing at when they went to Cape Town with Curwin Bosch back at No 10, Sikhumbuzo Notshe and Phepsi Buthelezi in the loose trio, Gerbrandt Grobler and Hyron Andrews in the second row, plus Rohan Janse van Rensburg in the No 12 among the other more experienced names who were back for the clash at DHL Stadium?
The question is worth asking when you note that Mongalo said that the players who played at the weekend had only had three training sessions together.
“I will wear it squarely on myself because we have a good machine going, and I did a risk-reward thing to give guys a break and put pressure on a group who did three training sessions to come here and play against the URC finalists without their Springboks,” said Mongalo.
“On a management-leadership thing, there’s probably a lesson for me, but then also for the guys on the field, we got a lot of answers. There are 15 guys back at home who are sharp and getting ready for the playoffs. We need to fill the rest of the group for the bench and a few guys put up their hands, but then other guys didn’t. We weren’t expecting it to be a romantic, good game of rugby, but we expected to see some fight, and we did not see enough of it.”
So were the URC frontline players on leave after the end of the URC season, which came when the Sharks were beaten by Leinster in their quarterfinal in early May? If there was a chance they’d be used again in the season, and that an alternative team was going to go to Cape Town for the final league fixture, surely they could have been given more than just three sessions of preparation.
Why it's more complicated than it appears on the surface is the presence in the group who went to play Province of players who have been there and done that when it comes to finals rugby. Notshe for instance won his first Currie Cup title playing for WP way back in 2014, and followed it up with another when Province beat the Sharks in the 2017 Durban final. It’s hard to believe that a fit and hungry Notshe would not significantly improve the Sharks’ chances of picking up what would be their ninth Currie Cup title.
You could forward the same argument for Curwin Bosch, plus Janse van Rensburg, who played in Super Rugby finals for the Emirates Lions and also won a Currie Cup with the first union he represented as a player.
Perhaps in one way it is a good thing the Sharks lost so badly on their trip to the Mother City. For it would have been more difficult to leave those players out, and return to the building of depth imperative that has underpinned the Sharks’ Currie Cup campaign, had the Sharks beaten WP.
But if the Sharks want to end the season with the famous golden trophy locked in the cabinet at HollywoodBets Kings Park, it might not be as simple as just selecting the 15 players who missed out on the Cape Town experience for Saturday’s semi against the Airlink Pumas.
There’s also the question of the possible impact the optional bye might have on a team that had good momentum when the break came, with their impressive win over a URC strength Lions team in Durban after coming back from a 14-0 deficit being one of the highlights of what has been a great domestic season for the Durbanites thus far.
Sometimes a fortnight’s break can have the negative impact of breaking momentum and if Mongalo wants evidence of why it could be suggested that the players who played in Cape Town might be significantly better now that they’ve had 80 minutes behind them, then the best example is the team that beat them at the weekend.
WP coach John Dobson felt he had made a mistake by bringing back URC players just six days after their defeat in the final against Munster and he was probably right. At the same time though the game in Kimberley was a reintegration process that paid dividends with the big win over their coastal rivals.