You don’t have to search too hard for evidence of what a difference the injection of experience could make to the Hollywoodbets Sharks’ current ailing Vodacom United Rugby Championship campaign. Lukhanyo Am has already supplied it.
The Sharks didn’t get across the line as winners against Connacht and it left them with a record after five games that reads five played and five losses.
However, the difference between their performance in Durban in their 13-12 loss to last year’s beaten URC semifinalists and what has gone before was seismic, and no-one could argue after this game that the Sharks don’t have clarity about what they are doing.
Although they still left too many points out there and coach John Plumtree was the master of understatement when he said his team wasn’t clinical enough with their finishing, the Sharks employed a busy multi-phase approach that is sure to attract the fans to Hollywoodbets Kings Park when, and not if, it comes right.
And the step up in performance under the influence of the returning 2019 Rugby World Cup-winner Am offers promise that it coming right could just coincide with the return of the plethora of experienced, decorated Springboks that are expected to return to be ready to play at the start of next month.
A lot of where the Sharks are going wrong at the moment is around their decision making, and with Am there the decision making has already improved markedly.
“I thought Lukhanyo was really good, it was his first game back and he showed his class,” said Plumtree.
“The guy pulls the trigger on the right options just because of his experience. That’s the standard and we’ve got guys around that are aspiring to be like him.”
SHARKS NOW PLAYING TO STRENGTHS OUT WIDE
There should be a similar rub off of experience when the other Boks return.
With Aphiwe Dyantyi showing signs in this early stage of his comeback to the playing field after four years away that he will rediscover the form that made him the 2018 international breakthrough player of the year, Aphelele Fassi proving a potent attacking threat from the back and full of running, and the pace of Makazole Mapimpi also returning, the Sharks will have plenty of class out wide when they are at full strength.
The Sharks now have a game-plan that will feed those strengths, and that could spell trouble for future opponents.
Of course, it might take time to synergise the Boks into the system - Am has trained with the team more than the players in the initial 2023 World Cup squad because he wasn’t in France in the first five weeks - and Plumtree might have a difficult decision to make after Saturday’s clash with the Welsh club, the Dragons.
DATE WITH BULLS LOOMS LARGE
The Sharks face their first derby of the new season on 2 December, and it is at Loftus against arguably South Africa’s form team in the URC so far, the Vodacom Bulls.
With the Sharks in a position where they already can’t afford to drop any more games if they are to harbour hopes of making the top four, which signifies home ground advantage in the playoffs, the Pretoria clash is going to be crucial for the Sharks and Plumtree may have to weigh up the obvious advantages the Boks bring against continuity and the growth shown by the team that played against Connacht.
Of course, no-one will leave Eben Etzebeth out if he is available to play and eager to do so, and ditto Ox Nche, so maybe it’s more about Plumtree establishing how hungry and ready those players are after their three weeks of celebration following the World Cup, and how quickly he can get them assimilated into the system in training.
NO TURNING AWAY FROM CURRENT PATH
One thing the Sharks definitely won’t be doing under Plumtree is letting the results dictate that they should move away from the path that the Kiwi has put them on since he returned to Durban at the start of the off-season after 10 years away.
“I’m loving the mindset [of the players], they’re doing everything that I’m asking them to do and I’ve got to take some responsibility for that as well,” said the former All Black and Ireland assistant coach.
“We’re playing a different style of rugby to what the Sharks have played in a number of years and we are doing it with the same players. So there will be teething problems and with the skill sets of some players (not being up to scratch) it is challenging.
“But I’m not going back to kicking the ball away and trying to create opportunities through luck. I want to build pressure through us playing good rugby. I don’t like losing and I’ve never lost this many games in a row before. So it’s new for me too. But understand this: on Monday, we’re our hardest critics. The media will go hard at us but it won’t be as hard as we go on ourselves, so we’ll be okay.”