Why Sharks’ return to type is unlikely to be repeated

One of the reasons those of us who doubted the Hollywoodbets Sharks in the past are tipping them to be the top-finishing South African team in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship is due to what has changed since their disastrous 2023-2024 campaign.

Firstly, head coach John Plumtree has clearly taken a firmer hand in the contracting process than some of his predecessors were allowed to do. After getting to know the players and his coaching staff during his first season in charge, Plumtree is now better acquainted with his players, and crucially along with the shrewd recruitments that have been made, he’s also got rid of several players he considered to be dead wood or surplus to requirements.

The switch in the Sharks’ fortunes arguably started when Plumtree replaced Curwin Bosch with S Hollywoodbets Sharks  at flyhalf, with the former Free Stater playing a lot closer to the gainline than Bosch, who is now playing overseas. Together with Masuku’s more built for style play, the other change in the second half of last season was the culture that started to bed in.

When the Sharks won the EPCR Challenge Cup to sneak into this season’s prestigious Investec Champions Cup through the back door, the culture that Plumtree had identified on his arrival as a big work-on was clearly bedding in. It was particularly evident on the day the Sharks hung tough and then clinched the game late when they played La Rochelle in the Challenge Cup semifinal in London.

It was on that day that they effectively changed the tendency to find ways to lose that had marked their URC campaign, and instead, they found a way to win. and they have carried the new trend of finding ways to win through into the new season. Well, at least into the pre-season, which the Carling Currie Cup playoff phase was for the Sharks.

GALWAY WAS BACK TO OLD WAYS

They won both the semifinal against the Vodacom Bulls and the final against the Fidelity ADT Lions in thrilling fashion when they seemed dead and buried. So it would have disappointed their supporters to see them appear to revert to type against Connacht in the opening URC game of the new season in Galway.

The Sharks were 27-7 ahead at one point but allowed their opponents back into the game after halftime and once Connacht had momentum, they were difficult to stop. The Sharks looked like they faded in the latter stages, and it was very much a case of this time finding a way to lose after their early dominance.

There shouldn’t really be cause for alarm though for the Sharks’ loss is completely explainable if you look at the tough rugby they played in the Currie Cup in the two weeks building up to the URC, particularly the 100 minutes they had to go through to win the semifinal. If coach Plumtree was honest, he’d tell you he never wanted to make the final, and he has been a big critic of the timing of the domestic competition, but once his team was there, he was duty-bound to honour the occasion and go all out.

Then of course, there was the emotion of the final win, coupled with that old bugbear of the URC era, something that just still doesn’t seem to be rectified, meaning the debilitating (for South African teams) logistics.

FLYING VIA MIDDLE EAST AND MAPUTO DOESN’T HELP

The Sharks are understood to have flown out from Durban when they left last Monday not directly to Europe, but to Maputo first. There they spent an hour and a half on the tarmac before flying to the Middle East, and then connecting to Ireland. It was probably what Sharks captain Vincent Tshituka was alluding to when he mentioned the “factors” that contributed to the defeat.

“Obviously, it was not a good second half from us. There were some factors that contributed but that is not something we will pay too much attention to as we know we are expected to deliver,” said Tshituka in a cyber press conference from Cardiff, where the Sharks are based in preparation for the coming weekend’s clash with the Dragons.

The Sharks loose-forward said that Connacht had stepped up impressively after halftime, and had attacked the Sharks at the breakdown. He didn’t want the 4G pitch at The Sportsground in Galway to be used as an excuse as the team had trained on the surface enough during the week.

WHITELEY HAPPY WITH EARLY INTENSITY

Assistant coach Warren Whiteley agreed that Connacht had been really good after halftime and had lifted their intensity, whereas it was the Sharks who had the intensity in the first half.

“We were happy with the intensity in the first. Connacht started well and we struggled to exit, but once we started to exit and became more accurate, we scored some good tries and played with high intensity,” said the former Springbok No 8.

“We just couldn’t match their intensity though in the second half. They targeted our breakdown, and of course, when it comes to the set-piece, our maul defence was not something we were happy with.”

He said those were aspects the Sharks are working on during their buildup to Saturday’s game.

“The one thing that is good this week is that we are here for the whole week, it is the first time in a long time where we haven’t had a shortened week. We haven’t had to travel, like we did last week, so we have a full week to prepare.”

The unsaid words there would relate to the team likely to be a lot more fresh now that the long journey to Wales has been consigned to the distant past. The Sharks should be much more settled and it should lead to a more sustained period of intensity against the Dragons than the Durbanites managed in Galway, where the fears that the Currie Cup success might rebound on them were well founded.