Boosted by new signings but Sharks must build now
The announcement that Springbok World Cup winners Andre Esterhuizen and Trevor Nyakane will be joining next season might have been a salve to some of the Hollywoodbets Sharks wounds after their defeat to the DHL Stormers, but recent history suggests they need more than names on paper to turn their fortunes around.
Make no mistake, Esterhuizen, who was a Shark before he moved overseas, is a massive buy for the Durbanites. In every possible way. They tried to bring the physical presence and go forward on the gainline when they lured former Emirates Lions star Rohan Janse van Rensburg to Durban, but that didn’t work out. There is no better replacement for Esterhuizen, and what he does, than Esterhuizen himself.
The Stormers were also interested in Esterhuizen, and he was understood to be really eager for a Cape Town move, but although they now have equity partners and can reach for the stars financially in the future, this is a time when the Cape franchise has to tighten their spending to start making some of the debt incurred by their mother union, Western Province. JD Schickerling’s expected return from Japan in July looks like being the only big signing made for next season.
SHARKS DON’T HAVE FEEDER SYSTEMS STORMERS HAVE
The Stormers though, with their schools and the work done on streamlining the pathways, plus the Varsity Cup teams that regularly produce WP and Stormers stars, are in a different position to the Sharks. There are no major rugby universities in KZN, and while there are some good schools, you just had to look at the schools reflected next to the names on the Origin Round weekend, with the players wearing their old school socks, for it to sink in where most of the best young talent in South Africa starts out.
The Sharks would be down the list behind the Western Cape, Pretoria and that veritable rugby factory in Bloemfontein, Grey College. So there is more of a need to buy in talent, something which frankly they haven’t done particularly well for a decade now and which is costing John Plumtree in this first season back at the union he played for as well as coached until 2013.
That the Sharks have more of a contracting issue than the Stormers was reflected in the Stormers coming to Durban this past weekend without their Springbok playmaking axis of Manie Libbok and Damian Willemse and still managing to boss their more experienced opponents in that area. What would the Sharks give to have Jurie Matthee and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu on their books?
Neither of those players are considered first choice and yet they lit up the Hollywoodbets Kings Park game with their performances as they underlined the fact that this country is better served when it comes to young flyhalves than may have been thought.
URC DEAD RUBBER AN OPPORTUNITY FOR PLUMTREE?
To perform in the modern world where you are playing across two major tournaments, the URC and the Investec Champions Cup, you do need to have the sort of depth currently boasted by the Stormers and the Bulls. He will argue with some justification that his results forced him into it, but if there is some criticism that can be levelled at Plumtree, it is that he hasn’t used his squad enough.
The frontline players, including the Springboks, appear to be fronting every week, even when the opponents are second rate Challenge Cup teams from France who leave the bulk of their first choice squad behind.
Plumtree doesn’t appear to trust the next line of players, and he hasn’t made too much secret of that, but with the Challenge Cup now the only way back into the elite Champions Cup, the URC does offer an opportunity for him to spread his net more and build his team culture across the squad rather than around a more narrow group of players.
Maybe he’s right and they aren’t good enough but when the Sharks started the URC without their World Cup Boks away against Leinster and Munster they produced performances that offered some hope at the time. And it is not difficult to understand why that was the case - those were the players that Plumtree had had working with him during the pre-season. They were the forerunners, if you like, or the pioneers, for Plumtree’s more busy and attacking game plan.
ADJUSTMENTS TO TEMPLATE WERE NECESSARY
The coach admits he has moved a few steps back from the template he has in mind. There were two reasons for that, one being that he realises the summer months in Durban, with the humidity effectively making just about every match a wet weather game, and the other being that he needs more time to get the skills and the conditioning up for that kind of rugby.
The Sharks actually are improving on that score, and although they still arguably have several players in their team that are too slow for the game Plumtree envisages, the Sharks did finish strongly against the Stormers. More than that, when Siya Masuku replaced Curwin Bosch at flyhalf, the Sharks had a much better attacking edge with a more direct and flat lining flyhalf. Again, that’s because of a contracting weakness that predates Plumtree’s return.
So it wasn’t surprising after the 25-21 defeat at home to the Stormers to point to recruitment as one of his immediate and most pressing priorities.
“We know the opportunity we have in that space (Challenge Cup)…but I’m not staring too much into the crystal ball,” said Plumtree. “I am not worried too much about the Challenge Cup right now. The more immediate things to pay attention to are our recruitment, learning more about our players and coaches, and letting them learn more about me.”
COACHING GROUP MAY NEED LOOKING AT
That last bit he mentioned about getting to know the coaches is both true but also an interesting point. And maybe that’s another thing that the Stormers get right and the Sharks get wrong. Most coaches assemble their own coaching teams - Jake White definitely does at the Bulls, and the Stormers’ John Dobson will tell you he’d never take up any other top job without his current assistants at his side.
Dobson and Dawie Snyman have been coaching together for the last 13 years. They know each other inside out, they trust each other implicitly. Which leads to a point - maybe in recruiting Plumtree the Sharks made a grave mistake by not allowing him to recruit his own assistants, something that might have given him leeway to have someone with him he knows well.
At the moment, as his comments on Saturday suggest, he has come in man alone. He will from this year, but not even Rassie Erasmus has ever done that - until now he’s always had Jacques Nienaber at his side. In turn Plumtree should have insisted that he gets to handpick his back room team, just like White, Dobson or for that matter Erasmus would have if it was they who were being lured to coach in Durban.
BOLDER SELECTIONS NEEDED FOR BUILD TO NEXT SEASON
Plumtree, does have the space now to do what he states he wants to do. And maybe the biggest silver-lining for Plumtree and his Sharks post the Stormers defeat is that it effectively renders the rest of the URC season a long dead rubber for them, which means now the pressure for results might have been lessened to the point he can be bold in his selections and give Masuku and his ilk a more extended chance to prove himself.
He’s spoken a lot about building team culture, and there is no better way to do that than to improve performance, so the remainder of the URC should be used to gather momentum. Finish this season with a flourish, with the Challenge Cup final at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London an obvious target and perhaps the last URC game at home against the Bulls another, and it will create the momentum that will make the team an easier fit for Esterhuisen, Nyakane and whoever else Plumtree might buy in the interim when the next season starts.
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