There were no excuses from the Sharks camp on Saturday night

MIKE GREENAWAY

There were no excuses from the Sharks camp on Saturday night following their 16-6 home defeat to the Stormers, and fair enough because the visitors had the upper hand throughout and the jaded Durbanites looked half asleep at times.

“We were a couple of percent off the pace pretty much in every area of the game,” coach John Plumtree admitted.

While there is still a long way to go in the competition – only seven of 18 weeks have been completed, with the knock-out stage to follow – the reality for the Sharks is that they have slipped to third on the SA Conference, one point below the Bulls and eight behind the Stormers, and eighth in the overall standings.

This won’t overly bother Plumtree because things can change very quickly. For instance, the Stormers have yet to travel and the Bulls are only into week one of their tour, and the Stormers and Bulls’ points tallies are inflated by the four-point freebies from their byes, not that the Sharks won’t gladly help themselves when it is their turn next week, after Saturday’s hosting of the Lions.

And after the bye the Sharks welcome back injured Patrick Lambie, whose absence has been conspicuous, although it is unfair to be too critical on how Jacques-Louis Potgieter is fitting in when he has had just two outings.

Regarding the Sharks’ performance against the Stormers, Plumtree said: “In the first half we played into their hands from an attack perspective in that there were times when we should have kicked to relieve pressure but we kept on playing.

“Our handling in contact let us down at times and our lineout didn’t function when it really needed to. We were a little worried about that area, and under pressure we were a bit naïve at times,” he said.

The match statistics bear out the coach’s words. The Sharks made 20 handling errors and lost five of their line-outs. It is going to be tough to beat a team of the Stormers’ calibre from that shaky foundation.

Was travel tiredness the problem?

“We said we weren’t going to use the travel as an excuse,” Pluntree said. “We were committed to that and we knew this game was probably going to be the hardest for us, but we rested up and the players caught up on their sleep. I don’t think we were particularly tired in the match. There was plenty of effort put in but the 50-50s just didn’t go our way, whether it was the ball on the ground or a referee decision or two. It was just a tough night for us against a really good side.”

When it started raining going into the second half the Sharks were 10-0 behind and struggled to play catch-up in the deteriorating conditions.

“Chasing the game against a really good defensive side was always going to be difficult,” the coach said. “They could afford to kick a bit more in the second half, and we needed to be slightly more positive in terms of our attack but we just weren’t accurate enough. We broke the line four or five times clearly and we had people in space and we didn’t cash in. It was just that one or two percent we were off, and we paid for that.”

by Mike Greenaway www.iol.co.za