Sharks coach meets Bok coach re Bok Captain

MIKE GREENAWAY

John Plumtree’s much publicised meeting in Durban on Monday with Springbok coach Peter de Villiers was an obvious line of questioning when the Sharks coach conducted his weekly media briefing in the Shark Tank yesterday, and Plumtree was succinct on the John Smit issue.

We can deduce that the only topic on De Villiers’ agenda was: “How can I pick my captain (Smit) in the position I have earmarked for him at hooker when the Sharks are not playing him there?”

Nevertheless, it was a “positive meeting” according to Plumtree who has been picking Bismarck du Plessis at hooker, and is set to do the same for Saturday’s home match against the Hurricanes (5pm).

“How I use John at the Sharks is an insight to how the Springboks could use him (rotating him around the front row to exploit his unique versatility as well as using him as an impact player off the bench),” Plumtree said. “How I am using John suits our team dynamics, but when Peter gets his team together, how he uses John is totally up to him. Right now John is happy with how we are playing him at the Sharks. He is in his last year of rugby and just wants to enjoy his game. He is in a good place and is enjoying his rugby.

“The gist of my chat with Peter is that I am doing what is best for the Sharks,” Plumtree concluded. “That is pretty much what our chat was based on.”

Co-incidentally, the man on Plumtree’s right at the press conference was none other than Smit’s rival for the Springbok No 2 jersey, Bismarck du Plessis, who was the player on media duty because of his consistently good performances for the Sharks.

No other player in the tournament has affected as many turnovers of opposition ball than the Bethlehem cattle farmer, who is also South Africa’s top forward try scorer in the competition.

“I try to contribute to the best of my ability in every aspect of the game, not just winning ball at the rucks,” he said. “Everybody wants to play their best rugby to push for positions come the end of the year…”

One area involving the Mighty Bismarck that has not gone well for the Sharks has been the line-out, where it has not so much been a case of errant throwing-in of the ball but poorly judged calls.

In this department, for years the Sharks relied on experienced and wily heads in Albert van den Berg and Johann Muller and are now struggling a touch with authoritative decision-making.

“We are in the process of rebuilding our line-outs,” Du Plessis said. “We have lost senior guys and it is a case where Alistair Hargreaves is new (and now injured!) while Steven Sykes for five years or so never had to make a call (because of Muller and Van den Berg).”

And overall, the Sharks are kind of in no man’s land in terms of how they are playing, according to burly Bismarck.

“We have been neither good nor bad,” he said. “We need to play a lot better. When we had our review on Monday, we agreed that we have been playing 10 minutes of good rugby followed by 15 minutes of bad rugby, and so on, and that has got to change as we approach crunch time.”

The former Grey College pupil said that he had followed the Cheetahs v Hurricanes match at the weekend with keen interest.

“Both sides were devastating when they carried the ball but I think both camps will agree that defence let them down, so the Hurricanes will be focussed on sorting that out against us.

“And with Patrick Lambie coming back at flyhalf we have a different player (to Jacques-Louis Potgieter, who deputised while Lambie was out with a broken finger) and one who is very good for our game of keeping the ball in hand,” Du Plessis continued. “So we could well play the open game of our Currie Cup campaign.”