In watching the 14 (and occasionally 13) – man Sharks defy the odds to beat the mighty Crusaders

IN watching the 14 (and occasionally 13) – man Sharks defy the odds to beat the mighty Crusaders in Christchurch for the first time, I was reminded of the first occasion I learned that a numerical advantage in team sport does not necessarily add up to the win that it should.

I was a callow 18-year-old and was watching the 1985 FA Cup final between Everton and Manchester United on what was then a “big screen” – a couple of tellies pushed together – at the Toti Central Sports Club, having earlier played my part in Toti under 21s losing 99-0 to Durban Collegians.

Pale as a ghost after that hiding and chastised from the seniors of the club for embarrassing them, I settled down to watch another code of sport. Blow me down, as I imagine they say in Manchester, when Kevin Moran, the United defender, was sent off for allegedly and deliberately bringing down Peter Reid, with the goalmouth yawning in front of him. Reid was the leader of an Everton team that was at the height of its glory days and as League champions was expected to do the double against mid-table United (they really were also-rans in those days!)

It was the first time in the then 104 year history of the FA Cup that a player had been sent off in a final, but United rallied and in a staggering victory against the odds, won the title when youngster Norman Whiteside scored in the 110th minute, to seal it 1-0 in extra time.

Incidentally, Moran was cleared by the “TMO”, not that they called it that in those days, and was given his winners medal along with the team in front of 100 000 fans at Wembley.

What has this got to do with the Sharks? A lot, really, when you consider how often in sport we see an underdog team suffer an early calamity that further fuels their desire to beat the odds.

United were given no price against Everton in 1985. And the bookmakers were smiling calmly when Moran was sent off by the strikingly bald-headed referee Peter Willis, a dead-ringer for Kojak (the TV detective of the time).

But United roused themselves under their great captain Bryan Robson and a team containing just three Englishmen (goalkeeper Gary Bailey a South African!, Robson and fullback John Gidman) defied all , and it was the 19-year-old Northern Irishman Whiteside that had the late and final say.

Incidentally, United had three other “Irishmen” in the side, but at the height of the Irish “Troubles” of the time, Paul McGrath, Frank Stapelton and Moran were very much south of the Ulster border, but were very much united behind Whiteside, who was heralded as Belfast’s next George Best, only to later sadly slip into obscurity following a series of injuries.

And how often in sport have we seen the example of that famous FA Cup final repeated when nobody has given the underdogs a hope?

Last week, the Crusaders were the Everton of the day. They had the titles behind them, the players in form and they were playing a team that had no right to beat them, according to history and the critics of the day. And then their opposition went a man down …

The lesson is that it sometimes works out that losing a player in an extraordinary way (such as Moran wrongly sent off against Everton) translates into the aggrieved team gaining an “extra” player”, while the favoured team subconciously feels that the game is won because the team they are expected to beat now has had a player removed.

The bottom line is that a number sometimes is nothing less than that – a number ! Often the game is won in the head and the collective psychological desire to win transcends the advantage in numbers.

By Mike Greenaway