Rugby’s train-spotters will no doubt find it intriguing

MIKE GREENAWAY

Rugby’s train-spotters will no doubt find it intriguing that after 15 years of Super Rugby competition, the Sharks have won 89 of their 184 matches, drawn six and lost … exactly 89. If a precisely 50 percent record doesn’t blow your hair back, think again in a South African context because the Sharks are in fact their country’s best performing team and if they manage 11 wins in their 16 pool matches in 2011, with the possibility of knock-out games to follow, they will be the first SA team to knock up a ton of victories, and to give that an international perspective, only the Crusaders, Blues and Brumbies are members of the three-figure club.

Which brings us to 2011, exactly a decade and a half since Gary Teichmann’s Sharks played in the very first Super 12 season. Immediately in front of John Smit’s team is tomorrow’s match against the Cheetahs and next week’s hosting of the Blues, who will tomorrow play the Crusaders in chilly Auckland and on Monday will arrive in the distinctly more clammy climes of Africa’s east coast in February.

For the Sharks, both of these sides simply have to beaten. No debate, no drama, no ifs and buts. Between eight and 10 points in the bank, finish and klaar. Nothing else will do for a Sharks team haunted by the recent ghosts of Super 14 campaigns past, and with exactly the same start to their season as last year – two home games and then a four-match overseas tour – the Sharks are petrified at the prospect of once again packing up a truck of load of troubles in their old kit bags at Kings Shaka airport, and with no conviction at all trying to smile, smile, smile.

Like last year, one of the teams is the Cheetahs and the other a tough though beatable Kiwi team (last year it was the Chiefs), but unlike 2010, the Sharks team named yesterday is settled, composed and if correctly focused should never, ever lose at home to a fairly good Cheetahs side, and in fact to any of the other 14 teams.

Their eye will be on the ball, make no mistake, and it won’t require so much as a word from coach Plumtree or captain Smit, both of whom endured five weeks of hell last year when the Rugby Gods (and their deputees on earth, Australasian referees) seemed to conspire against the men in grey before there was a win at last.

Nobody needs reminding that this time last year, flyhalf Steve Meyer ruined Plumtree’s Wednesday day off with a revelation out of left field that he no longer had the appetite for first class rugby.

No fine.

Well this year we can expect no such mental frailty from Patrick Lambie, nor his back-up at 10, the fiery Jacques-Louis Potgieter who was signed from the Bulls last year at the height of the Sharks’ flyhalf catastrophe, when limited Andy Goode was battling to boot the Sharks out of the mire.

But the ink was still drying on the Potgieter contract when Lambie spectacularly came through in the Sharks’ victorious Currie Cup campaign and he has understandably been retained, especially because of the pivotal role he played in the Sharks’ invigorating new game plan.

In fact, for tomorrow’s game, there are just three changes to the starting line-up that beat Western Province in the final. Most notable of those changes is the selection of Springbok captain John Smit at loosehead prop, ahead of The Beast, but it will be no surprise to those who recall how well the Sharks front row functioned in the 2009 Currie Cup when in an inspired selection, Plumtree picked Smit at loosehead alongside the Du Plessis brothers.

The educated opinion after that campaign was that Smit was a better loosehead than a tighthead (the position in which he was retreaded for the Boks in 2009), but he will no doubt also have his time at hooker over the five months of Super Rugby.

Incidentally, the two other changes to the team that started the Currie Cup final are former Cheetah Meyer Bosman replacing current Cheetah and former Shark Andries Strauss at 12 and, at openside flank, Jacques Botes coming in for Keegan Daniel, who is nursing mild injury concerns but is nevertheless on the bench.

Referee: Craig Joubert

Kick-off: 5.05pm

Sharks: 15 Louis Ludik, 14 Odwa Ndungane, 13 Stefan Terblanche, 12 Meyer Bosman, 11 Lwazi Mvovo, 10 Pat Lambie, 9 Charl McLeod, 8 Ryan Kankowski, 7 Willem Alberts, 6 Jacques Botes, 5 Alistair Hargreaves, 4 Steven Sykes, 3 Jannie du Plessis, 2 Bismarck du Plessis, 1 John Smit (capt).

Substitutes: Beast Mtawarira, Eugene van Staden, Anton Bresler, Keegan Daniel, Conrad Hoffmann, Jacques-Louis Potgieter, Adrian Jacobs.

Cheetahs : 15 Hennie Daniller, 14 Philip Burger, 13 Robert Ebersohn, 12 Andries Strauss, 11 Ryno Benjamin, 10 Naas Olivier, 9 Sarel Pretorius, 8 Kabamba Floors, 7 Philip van der Walt, 6 Frans Viljoen, 5 Wilhelm Steenkamp, 4 Francois Uys, 3 WP Nel, 2 Adriaan Strauss (capt), 1 Coenie Oosthuizen.

Substitutes: Ryno Barnes, Kobus Calldo, Waltie Vermeulen, Ashley Johnson, Tewis de Bruyn, Sias Ebersohn, Riaan Viljoen.

by Mike Greenaway www.iol.co.za