Nahtino
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 Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 7:32 pm Post subject: Article:Gavin Rich(Are the Sharks..S14 specialists ??) |
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Are the Sharks Super 14 specialists? by Gavin Rich
Posted on 8 October 2006
We should get that last column out of the way as quickly as we can. Obviously that crystal ball was coughing up nonsense, for the Natal Sharks aren’t even going to be playing in the final, let alone win it.
The way the Sharks have regressed in the last weeks of the season is quite remarkable, and also no doubt extremely alarming for their fans. Just a few weeks ago, before they played the Bulls in Durban, you would have made them favourites to win the title as they looked to be gathering impressive steam for the business end of the competition.
Instead they imploded, with the semifinal result being just the latest in a sequence of disappointing performances. Although they ultimately lost by just two points, the Sharks were also outplayed for most of their match against the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein in the league stage of competition.
And they were hardly in the game at all when they were comprehensively beaten 50-32 by the rampaging Blue Bulls in Durban a couple of weeks prior to that. It is hard to believe now that they started favourites for that game, and yet there were good, sound rugby reasons for it at the time.
Several of the young Sharks had done enough during the season to earn call-ups to Jake White’s Springbok squad. BJ Botha, Ruan Pienaar and JP Pietersen all saw action in the home Tri-Nations victories against New Zealand and Australia, as did Johan Muller.
So where did it all go wrong for the Sharks? Perhaps we should start by saying that in many ways, the semifinal in Bloemfontein was a microcosm of the Sharks season.
Coach Dick Muir named one team, but when it ran out of the tunnel at Vodacom Park, the Sharks side included no less than six changes from the one that had been announced. This was in keeping with the Sharks’ policy which now goes back several years, but it does beg the question – if you are going to field a different team to the one that you announce, why bother to announce one at all? Surely that is just lying to the public?
Granted, there is a lot to be gained by keeping the opposition guessing to the last minute. But then surely it would be better, and more honest, to just do what Western Province were thinking of for much of last week, which was to name just a 22 and only finalise the side immediately before the kick-off.
This though is a tangent, for it is not the fudging of the team that lost the Sharks their Currie Cup challenge, but rather the continued mixing and matching of combinations which has seen the Durban side play much of the competition as one of the least settled teams.
This is not necessarily to blame the coach. He made it known in an interview I did with him for a South African rugby magazine right at the start of the Currie Cup season that the trophy itself was secondary to his main aim, which was to prepare as many Sharks players as possible for next year’s Super 14.
Muir said at the end of June that he would like to win the Currie Cup, but that the Super 14 was his main focus. And his selections in the initial stages of the domestic season made it clear that he was not joking. It will be recalled that in those early days he had two completely different squads, and that it was essentially a Sharks 'B' team that came unstuck in the match against Griquas in the fourth round of the competition.
Muir said that he wanted to see who could make it, and who couldn’t. If these matches did show him what he was looking for, then it could yet prove that the failures in the Currie Cup were not in vain, and it could translate into something special in the Super 14.
It was the same with his game-plan, which until the final weeks of the season appeared to have as its sole purpose the promotion of intelligent onfield decision-making. Muir might be the first to admit there were times his strategy relegated practicality to a poor second in the order of priorities.
The exception was the Durban match against Western Province, where the weather conditions made it impossible for his team to play their usually all-out attacking game, and the league match away to the Cheetahs, when the need to win at all costs had suddenly become more important (the Sharks needed to make the semis).
Knowing these facts about the Sharks' season, it is then instructive to look at where the Currie Cup differed from their Super 14 campaign. And here we might stumble onto the key to the Sharks’ inability to maintain their Super 14 momentum into the Currie Cup: firstly, AJ Venter wasn’t there to captain them when the Currie Cup got tight, whereas both Venter and John Smit were there in the Super 14, and secondly they did not have the experience of Tony Brown to look after things at the back, and guide the youngsters, during the domestic season.
I will add a third: Muir spoke at the end of the Super 14 of the importance of establishing a winning culture, something the Sharks failed to do in the Currie Cup simply because they were too busy experimenting with game-plans and combinations. The Sharks lost when it mattered because when the knockouts arrived they no longer had the winning habit.
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