Friday night’s Hollywoodbets Kings Park double header involving a pre-season game against Saracens and the final Carling Currie Cup clash with the Airlink Pumas will bring to an end an offseason that has provided plenty of encouragement for Sharks director of rugby Neil Powell.
You’d think that with the Hollywoodbets Sharks XV, as the Currie Cup team is known, languishing with the Vodacom Blue Bulls in second last place there’d be reason for concern, but there is context.
And an enthusiastic Pietermaritzburg crowd watched the young Sharks team, so well led by captain Nick Hatton and coached by JP Pietersen, confirm the turnaround that has taken place since the ignominious 64-0 defeat suffered at the hands of the Bulls near the start of domestic season by beating the Boland Kavaliers in a thriller.
Indeed, some of the teeth-gnashing of Sharks fans and some critics at the time of that Pretoria game was misplaced, for the reality was that the Durban team and the Bulls weren’t exactly on the same track back then.
It has changed subsequently, with new Bulls Vodacom United Rugby Championship coach Johan Ackermann ironically confirming just after the Loftus massacre that he was withdrawing personnel he saw as important to the URC challenge, but at the time the Bulls ran riot they had a far more experienced team playing for them than the Sharks did.
WENT IN COLD
More than that, there was also a marked difference in the respective buildups, with the Bulls placing a strong emphasis on trying to win the competition the Sharks won last year, while the Sharks didn’t avail themselves of a proper preparation to the competition and effectively went in cold.
“We started off slow and for a number of reasons,” said Powell in looking back at the performances of a team that effectively played its last game together as on Friday night the Currie Cup team is likely to be infused with URC players as the focus switches to the international competition that kicks off just over three weeks from now.
“After last season’s URC semifinal defeat to the Bulls there were five weeks until the start of the Currie Cup. We decided to give the guys a break for player welfare reasons. We gave them three weeks off so that effectively we only had a two-week pre-season without any warmup games before the start of the Currie Cup and I think it showed in our first two games.
“Training can only achieve so much, you need a warmup game or two to get the team structures right, and we ended up having to do that once the Currie Cup had started. So full credit to coach JP and his fellow coaches for what they did. After playing two strong teams in the form of the Lions and the Bulls, we then came close against the Cheetahs, we pushed Griquas really close in Kimberley, which is a venue that the coastal teams always find very tough to play at, then we beat WP and followed up this last weekend with a win against a very good Boland Kavaliers team.
“We went in looking for progression, effort and development and I think this year’s Currie Cup gave that to us. I do think that the competition in terms of physicality and intensity sits between the under-21 competition and the URC, so for us it is a good gauge, and an opportunity for us to see if the juniors who have come through our system can play at that level. It is a good gauge of whether they are capable of going on to play in the URC.”
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BETTER SQUAD THAN LAST YEAR’S
There aren’t too many members of the Sharks XV who will be featuring in the Sharks URC squad, although some that did well will be part of what could be viewed as a URC trial night for the Sharks on Friday night.
Two teams will be in action, with the Saracens game being the curtain-raiser to the Currie Cup game against a Pumas team that features a few players who will become Sharks in October.
But in terms of laying the foundation for good succession planning, the domestic competition was invaluable to the Sharks.
“For me this Currie Cup squad is actually better than last year’s Currie Cup squad that made the playoffs. The only difference for me is that we had experienced guys last year like (hooker) Dan Jooste and Reniel Hugo, a No 5 lock who was very experienced led our lineout. We also had a veteran in Lionel Cronje at No 10. This year we threw the guys more in at the deep end.
“it was a tough one for our captain, Nick Hatton. I sent him a message after we lost a close game against the Cheetahs the week after the big loss in Pretoria, congratulating him on how he led the side at that time. I told him we had done really well. As South Africans we tend to be focused on results so we forget to look at development.
“I was really pleased with the young guys. There were a lot of 19-year-olds in the team. Remember that the SA under-20 guys couldn’t be used right at the start of the competition. They were just back from the Junior World Cup, which they won, and were only eligible from the second week. It takes time for a team to get cohesion.”
AGE GROUP SIDES ALSO SHOWING SPECIAL CHARACTER
Powell said in an interview with supersport.com in June that there had been a shift of emphasis at the Sharks, with the intention being to start feeding the senior team from the bottom rather than relying so much on buying players in, and that the creation of a distinctive Sharks team culture in the young players and teams would be critical to chances of future success.
So it was unsurprising to hear Powell way that the character shown by the players not just in the Currie Cup team but also the teams below that recently is a big reason to feel upbeat.
“it is not just in the Currie Cup side that a strong team culture has become evident, which was shown with the way we attacked from deep inside our own half after the hooter against Boland to eventually win the game, but also in our age-group sides in recent weeks,” said Powell.
“The other day our under-19 team was 29-12 down against WP with 15 minutes to go but they didn’t give in and came back and won the game. In the last few minutes Province were camped on our tryline but we defended the lead.
“Seeing the culture coming through with the younger players, the pride they are showing in the jerseys, has been very heartening. We lost in the under-21 game against WP but it was a close game and we pushed a really strong WP team all the way. There was a lot of fight and tenacity from the players in that game which was also pleasing to see.”