More tries not a concern for Sharks

More tries not a concern for Sharks

11th Feb 2015, 10:13

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Wins matter: Pat Lambie

Scoring more tries during this season's Super Rugby campaign is the last thing on the Sharks' minds, fly-half Patrick Lambie said on Tuesday.

The Durban franchise were the second worst try scorers in the competition last season and came in for criticism from some quarters as they struggled in attack.

"We might not have scored as many tries last year as we would have liked but we managed to win some important games and make it to the semi-final.

"This year we want to take it a step further. Our focus is on our intensity and playing a good brand of rugby, if we work hard enough that will be the case," the Springbok back said.

The Sharks scored 29 tries, which was the second worst alongside the bottom-placed Rebels and one better than the Bulls.
They kick off the new campaign against the Cheetahs this weekend.

(...) 

the whole article:

http://www.planetrugby.com/story/0,25883,3551_30837,00.html

 For what we saw last week against Toulon it seems that it's true that the last thing on the Shark's mind is to score more tries.
I just watched the second half and get the impression that the backline was not used at all. I went to the stats and found:

FB Marais 0/0 0 5/1/2 3 0 0 0 2 1/0 0/0 0 0/0 W Sithole 0/0 0 0/0/1 2 0 0 0 0 6/2 0/0 1 0/0 C Murray 0/0 0 0/1/2 5 0 0 0 1 2/0 0/0 0 0/0 C Williams 0/0 0 0/0/1 3 1 1 0 0 2/1 0/0 1 0/0 W Mvovo 0/0 0 0/0/2 4 0 0 0 2 2/0 0/0 0 0/0 FH Lambie 0/0 9 8/4/6 10 0 0 1 5 5/2 0/0 0 0/0 SH Reinach 0/0 0 4/12/5 10 0 1 1 1 2/0 0/0 1 0/0

This is 10-men rugby at its highest level.

Btwin the 5 centers and OB they made 8 runs and gained 17 meters. An average 1 run and 3.4 m. gained per player. I cannot recall to have seen so poor stats.

I know that pre-season games cannot be taken as indicative of nothing but to finish with these stats there should have been an strict gameplan.
Is this going to be the gameplan for the season?

The only players of the backline to receive the ball were Reinach and Lambie but they received few balls of which they kicked more or less a third and run themselves another third. The other 5 backline players were simple spactators.
A change from Joke White's tactics was expected for this season, a more expansive brand of rugby but it seems that this is not gonna be the case , what do the sharks fans think?

Over the last year, the Sharks has a serious problem in their backline - they played only ten men rugby and the saboteur of backline play was Francois Steyn,   Last Thursday their center selections was a serious joke.   
They have better centers - like Esterhuizen and Fisher - and they then picked two of the worse centers in SA to pay against Toulon.   Their problem does not end there.  Their best center - Paul Jordaan - is injured and the useless Francois Steyn is coming back.  
The reason I have serious reservations about the Sharks this year is their backline play - which because of poor selections outside of the half-backs, remains a major problem.  

 @ABasquefan. I agree about the Toulon game. This was my opinion elsewhere:

"My concern in this game in particular was that it seems as though the Sharks almost approached this game like a final of some competition. It looks as though they were not really interes ted in anything but winning the game. 
They hardly ever looked interested in running the ball or attacking with the back line. Toulon threw caution to the wind and tried to score tries despite a fairly disrupted back line and the absence of a few other big names. They did not go for points through kicks and only went for the poles with the last penalty. The only guys who really had advantage from this game, IMO, were the Sharks forwards in the rucks, mauls and line outs where they were great. I have never been a great Bismarck fan but he seems to be back to where he was in 2009/10/11 which is great. 
PSDT was all over the show. Hope that he could stay injury free from now on. "