The Cell C Sharks’ quest for a top-seven position in the Vodacom Rugby Championship is still very much alive and they can thank Curwin Bosch for that as the flyhalf was the difference between the teams in their 29-7 win over the Emirates Lions in Johannesburg on Saturday.
It was Bosch’ fine try in the first half that bolstered the Sharks’ confidence after they were hardly in the game in the first 27 minutes but somehow conspired to go 7-0 ahead. And it was what kept them level at the halfway mark when they could easily have been 20 points behind.
It was also Bosch’s field kicking that enabled the Sharks to relieve much of the territorial pressure that was applied on them. Credit really must go to Bosch for how the 25-year-old has improved his game and pretty much resurrected himself from the dead in career terms.
Bosch was blamed for so much that went wrong for the Sharks last year, but he’s now got his confidence up and has the bit between his teeth and is starting to look like the gifted youngster who appeared to have a great career in front of him when he left school at the end of 2015.
THAT 50/22 WAS CRUCIAL
Bosch’s skills kept his team in the game in a first half where the Lions would have become increasingly more frustrated with their inability to turn territorial and possession dominance into points, and then in the second half it was Bosch again who made the difference. The Lions spent the first minutes of the second half on the attack but it was a superb Bosch 50/22 that set up the field position and attacking opportunity that led to a smart try to wing Thaakir Abrahams in the corner. That score put the Sharks ahead for the first time.
Bosch kicked the conversion from the touchline and then although he missed a long-range penalty immediately after that, it was Bosch who kicked the three-pointer that put the Sharks more than a converted try ahead in the 57th minute.
Against a team low on confidence, that was always going to be a significant advantage and so it proved. The five points the Sharks got for their bonus point win lifts them to seventh from eighth and keeps them in strong contention to clinch their place in next year’s Heineken Champions Cup.
SHARKS DECISION ON HALFTIME WHISTLE WAS BIZARRE
Yet the Lions will have ended the game lamenting missed opportunities and wondering what might have been had they capitalised on their early ascendancy. It was a poor half, meaning both teams were poor, and if anything summed up the first half, it was when the Sharks elected to go for the corner with a kickable penalty.
Given how under the whip they had been up to then, taking the easy three points that were on offer to take a lead to the break would have been a massive psychological boost for the Sharks. Particularly given how poor they had been for most of the half.
The Lions mauled the resultant lineout into touch, perhaps not surprising considering the Sharks pack was missing a forward following the yellow carding of Vincent Tshituka, who at the time was on the field as a blood replacement for lock Gerbrandt Grobler. It meant the two teams were 7-7 at the break, which was still a win for the Sharks given how their opponents had failed to take advantage of their dominance in several areas.
LIONS WILL BE KICKING THEMSELVES
From the opening minutes, it was the Lions who dominated possession and territory. They also won the battle of the gainline. But somehow they conspired against themselves at almost every opportunity. By the 20th minute, the Lions flyhalf Gianni Lombard had missed his third penalty attempt. The last one was by some distance the easiest of those, but all of them were kicks that should have been slotted.
Immanuel Tshituka, the home team’s No 8, was held up over the line earlier and there were several opportunities the Lions created, such as when they had a wonderful break out from near their own line to go the length of the field, with Jaco Kriel, Morne van den Bergh and Edwill van der Merwe all featuring.
But when a team is low on confidence, sometimes hesitancy comes into the finishing, and that appeared to happen to the Lions in the first half of this game. Perhaps it also applied to the Sharks, who gave away nine penalties to just two in the second half, which meant it was small wonder that they struggled to get going.
As it turned out though, they made full use of their first glimmer of a scoring opportunity, with Bosch sliding between two big forwards to score his team’s first try. Bosch’s easy conversion of his own try made it 7-0 after 27 minutes, and six minutes later it was Marius Louw, the Lions captain and former Sharks stalwart, who drove through a gap spotted by Van den Bergh to score an almost carbon copy try at the other end.
DRAMATIC MOMENTUM SHIFT
While it was Bosch that kept them in equilibrium, the Sharks as a whole were impressive in the way they turned around the momentum in the second half. An indication of how much the pendulum swung was that by the 68th minute, they had gone past the Lions in terms of penalties awarded.
That was also the precise moment that Fez Mbatha drove over to score the try that ended the game as a contest. Grant Williams won the foot race to a rolling kick behind the tryline for the bonus point try in the 73rd minute.
Scores
Cell C Sharks 29 - Tries: Curwin Bosch, Thaakir Abrahams, Fez Mbatha and Grant Williams; Conversions: Curwin Bosch 3; Penalty: Curwin Bosch.
Emirates Lions 7 - Try: Marius Louw; Conversion: Gianni