Hollywoodbets Sharks coach John Plumtree was still unhappy even though his team completed a successful tour with their win over Ulster, but better context to where the Durbanites are in their Vodacom United Rugby Championship challenge was provided on the eve of the game.
It was during the team announcement press conference ahead of the Ulster game that Plumtree drew on a horse racing analogy that accurately sums up where his team are as they welcome back star players from injuries. Plumtree admitted his team was short of a gallop against Edinburgh, their first game of the two match tour, where rust was a factor, but would be ready for the rugby equivalent of the big race, the Kentucky Derby, when it arrives.
“You could certainly see some rust against Edinburg, not just from a team collective but also an individual skill set level,” said Plumtree.
“I think the problems of the first 20 minutes was about individual skills, like not finding touch, not clearing well at the breakdown or missing a tackle, which put us under pressure. People just need to be a little bit patient with us. It’s been a difficult season with injuries and challenges around continuity in the selection. But we’ve got players coming back at the right time.
“If you compared us to a Hollywoodbets horse I’d say we just won by a nose but we know there’s a Kentucky Derby in four or five weeks’ time and we want to win that race. So we want to get that horse fitter, train it hard and get it across the line and maybe win it by four or five lengths and not by a nose.”
GAME OF TWO HALVES
The Sharks went on after those comments to win 22-19 at the Kingspan Stadium, in the process becoming the first South African franchise team to win in Belfast. The 16th round clash was a game of two halves, with the Sharks starting slowly but then hitting their straps, something which might be a microcosm of the picture that will be presented to us when in June we look back at their season in its entirety.
There was a lot of nonsense spoken and written after the narrow win over Edinburgh. Yes, the names on the Sharks’ team sheet should have driven an expectation that the visitors would win, but Edinburgh is a venue where South African teams have struggled. And there must be a reason for that.
If you’d read some of the social media stuff coming out of Durban you’d have thought the Sharks had lost that game and had gone in with a team that had been playing together for months. Neither was true. The Sharks welcomed back several of their star players after long injury layoffs for that game, and there was always going to be rust.
And rust against a team as primed and motivated as Edinburgh were in their quest for a top eight finish, could easily have been fatal. It wasn’t. The Sharks won with a late try to Makazole Mapimpi, and the fact that it was the umpteenth time they have won like that this season should surely have been an indicator that the motivation and culture is where it should be. It takes a champion team to make a habit of winning close games and games they maybe should have lost.
WANT TO WIN BREAD AND BUTTER COMPETITION
The Sharks’ status as a champion team isn’t established yet. They did win the EPCR Challenge Cup last year and the Carling Currie Cup at the start of this season, but those don’t really rank as top trophies, at least not in comparison to the one that Plumtree and his team are focusing on now - the URC. When Liverpool clinched the League this past Sunday, they triumphed in what they called “the bread and butter competition” and that is where the URC stands for those who play in it.
Well, maybe not Leinster, who regard the Champions Cup as the competition that should define them. In time the Sharks might get to that point too, but for now dreaming about European glory is unrealistic given the logistic challenges, SA’s commitment to a 12 month season and the fact that the development of depth, so critical because of the aforementioned challenges, is still a work in progress.
The Sharks desperately want to win the URC and that ambition tempered Plumtree’s mood after a triumph against Ulster that warranted great celebration.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do if we want to win this championship,” he said after the match.
“It was a game of two halves. We had a slow start. In the first half an hour, there were too many errors, some defensive lapses, and we didn’t build enough pressure.
“We were chasing the game from early on, but ten minutes before halftime, we started playing some footie and were pretty unlucky not to go 10-19 at the break with the TMO decision, which I thought was pretty rough.
“In the second half, we just continued where we left off. We dominated the gain line, the boys’ confidence came back up, and we scored. Then we thought we could get the game if we got the right amount of territory and possession.”
CONFORMED TO RACING ANALOGY
Which they did, with a penalty in the dying minutes clinching a great turnaround win. And while Plumtree admitted to being furious at the first half performance, the game did conform to what he’d said the day before in the team announcement press conference.
The real Kentucky Derby takes place this weekend, but Plumtree’s version of that feature race is when the Finals Series kicks off in four weeks time. The Sharks have two home games against Welsh teams to help them warm up, and the quarterfinal, probably against the DHL Stormers, will be at Hollywoodbets Kings Park. Don’t bet against them being ready by then and they do have enough players with World Cup winning experience, plus the experience of being successful in the playoff phase of the Challenge Cup and Currie Cup, to make their critics eat their words.