Cell C Sharks coach Sean Everitt was understandably pleased with the performance of his flyhalf Curwin Bosch in his team’s great Vodacom United Rugby Championship win over log leaders and PRO14 champions Leinster.
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Bosch missed a few early penalty attempts, one from close range he would normally slot without too much problem and another from the limit of his range at sea level, but although he had a few kicks charged down, from the start he showed in is all-round game the benefits of the confidence growth he experienced in the recent big wins over the Emirates Lions and Dragons.
“I am very happy for him. He has been criticised a lot and I was criticised for selecting him,” said Everitt after a 28-23 win that owed a lot to Bosch’s kicking game behind a dominant pack but in which he also featured more than he usually does on attack.
“Form is temporary, and class is permanent. He was criticised after we lost against Edinburgh, but his performance was good against Edinburgh. His tackle percentage is now in the 90s, and that used to be a glaring weakness in his game. Tonight, he took the ball to the line and made the right decisions on attack.”
Everitt has every right to be pleased for it is clear from Bosch’s recent performances that good coaching is paying off. He’s starting to bring the aspects of the game that previously he was criticised for and was lacking.
CONFUSION OVER REASONS FOR CRITICISM
There’s often a bit of confusion when it comes to criticism of Bosch. As was the case after the 2020 Currie Cup final, it appears that there is sometimes an impression that place-kicking is everything, the be-all and end-all when it comes to the former Grey High pupil.
It was because he missed kicks in that Loftus domestic decider, fuelling the perception that he lost the game for his team based on the mathematics of what the Sharks lost by, that the brickbats were thrown in his direction, rather than his more general failings.
But a flyhalf does not only kick for posts, he must do a lot more than that. And Bosch’s kicking from the tee should never be what is questioned. Every kicker will have an off-day, and in that sense, Everitt is right when he says class is permanent. Obviously for a team’s first choice place-kicker, his confidence in all-round play can be impacted by missed kicks, as used to be a known tendency for Ruan Pienaar in his early years with the Sharks.
Having a flyhalf who can only kick for posts, no matter how good he is, will never be enough if he can’t bring to his all-round game the dynamics that will help drive his team’s tactical and attacking game.
In that regard, Everitt would probably admit that the criticism of Bosch’s earlier performances was justified. He was much improved against Leinster, but he did bring things to his play that he failed to bring earlier in the Sharks’ URC campaign.
CROSS-ROADS AFTER EDINBURGH DEFEAT
He says Bosch was good against Edinburgh but that is a matter for debate - he made several mistakes kicking out of hand that night, it wasn’t just his place-kicking that was off. Given how the Sharks pack dominated that game, even just an okay performance from Bosch would surely have seen the Sharks win that wet weather clash?
You expect your halfbacks to win the game for you when you have that kind of forward dominance in the wet. Instead, it was the opposition flyhalf, Blair Kinghorn, who walked away with the man of the match award even though he played behind a well beaten pack.
Bosch did appear to be at a cross-road at that point, and so was Everitt with that selection. There was a dysfunction in the Sharks’ attacking game that many experts agreed was sourced in Bosch’s refusal to take the ball to the line and tendency to play from the pocket, something that takes the players around him out of the game as an attacking threat.
That Everitt stuck with Bosch might have had more to do with the dodgy science of the Sharks’ recruiting strategy than necessarily his faith in the player. Everitt does not hold the recruitment reins like, for instance, John Dobson does at the Stormers or Jake White at the Bulls. He gets to work with the players that have been recruited for him, and while Boeta Chamberlain appears to have lost some confidence, the Argentine recruit, Tito Bonilla, has the same weaknesses that Bosch had.
CONFIDENCE IS THE KEY WORD FOR BOSCH
Everitt had little choice but to stick with Bosch and just hope the coaching of he and his assistants would pay off and Bosch would start coming right once he gained his confidence. And two relatively easy wet weather games, where the Sharks showed they had learned from their Edinburgh experience, were perfect for that in the sense that the hosts dominated the forward battle, as they did against Leinster.
As Bosch’s confidence has grown, so has his willingness to take on defenders. The 24-year-old is a confidence player though, and here is the crux of the problem and the key to him having a settled future at the Sharks and at the top levels of the professional game: His big test will come when that confidence is knocked. When that happens, and he starts to feel fragile again, will he revert to type and go back to playing from the pocket?
The tests of the sustainability of the Bosch revival are sure to come in the coming months. In this most recent game, Leinster appeared to make the mistake of kicking too long onto Bosch and fullback Aphelele Fassi rather than take the contestable route.
It rebounded on them by way of the Fassi run that led to Jaden Hendrikse’s try, and a sizeable percentage of Bosch’s impressive running metres in the game might have been because he surprised Leinster by running back at them rather than putting boot to ball.
After seeing that, it will be interesting to see what approach Connacht take next weekend at Hollywoodbets Kings Park and, beyond that, Ulster at the Kingspan Stadium in Belfast in what could be a decisive game for the Sharks in their quest for home ground advantage in the play-offs.
Just like the attention on Bosch’s previous failings did not arise from just one poor performance, so you’d have to say that the jury will be out for a period of time on whether the necessary shift in the Bosch game - and compared to where he was before that shift has been pretty seismic - will be lasting and lead to him being a consistent player.
It was not just the critics who doubted Bosch’s suitability for the Sharks’ playing style, but also people involved in the Sharks’ set-up, as evidenced by the comments of CEO Eduard Coetzee at a media weekend in January. It was clear then that there was concern and that, in a sense, Bosch was for sale.
To quell that concern and kill off any intention there may be to go outside of the current group for a solution to the perceived flyhalf problem, Bosch’s performances in the tough games that are to come and into the play-offs are going to be a litmus test and a proving ground for his reliability going forward. Unfortunately for those who play the position, flyhalves are like airline pilots in the sense that the people who rely on them expect them to get it right every time and not just some of the time.