One has to concede the sharks barring injuries and bent refs are the favourites to win the super 15. What with the talent they have imported and Jake as a coach they should with reaonable fortune win it.
Kiwiws will bleat about the pap chiefs and sime go on about the old crusts etc but realistically it is Jakes sharks that are the team to beat.
Ex Keo:
The glee and demonstrativeness with which Sharks officials joined the players in celebrating their win over Western Province in the Absa Currie Cup final told the story of the year for rugby in Durban, with the triumph at Newlands bringing a bright end to what had been an otherwise dark and gloomy season.
By beating WP 33-19 on their home patch in the deciding match of the domestic season, the Sharks were able to finish off 2013 on a positive note and complete a bizarre turn-around from the corresponding match of the year before. Whereas in 2012 it was the Sharks who dominated the Currie Cup but WP beat them at home in a one-off final, this time it was Province who ended the league phase of the season as emphatically the better team – but then lost in the deciding game when they were favourites.
But it would require a Josef Goebbels (KIWI) style propagandist to sell the past 12 months as a success for the Sharks, with a change of guard in both the administration and the coaching at the union being handled poorly. Couple that with the tragic circumstances that led to a fan losing his life in the Kings Park precinct after a Super Rugby match and it becomes apparent just why the Currie Cup title was so important to the Sharks bosses.
They copped a lot of flak during the course of the season, but now they will at least be able to go into next year slating their team as Currie Cup champions.
It was because they weren’t able to do that at the start of this year that probably led to the upheaval at the union in mid-season, when John Plumtree effectively had to learn from the media about his axing as coach.
Had the Sharks won last year’s domestic final against WP, the previous coaches probably would have survived the poor Super Rugby campaign, which was blighted by an injury epidemic that eventually made it impossible to plan from one week to the next as players from outside the contracted group had to be engaged at short notice. (Ditto Stormers)
The extra motivation given to them during the off-season by the 2012 Currie Cup defeat initially looked like it would work for the Sharks. They started off the Super Rugby season confidently enough, and wins over the Cheetahs and Stormers represented their best start in a while. Indeed, although by their own admission they weren’t playing their best rugby, they were unbeaten when Jake White brought his Brumbies to Durban in mid-March and were near the top of the log.
That though was the day it all started to unravel for the Sharks. While the Brumbies appeared to surprise them with the force of their physical game, which has never been a noted aspect of any Australian team, the Sharks looked ineffectual and disinterested during a first half where they were hammered in every sphere of the game.
The game was effectively lost by the half hour mark, and while the Sharks did stabilize things a bit in the second half, the magnitude of the defeat was a severe setback that set the Sharks onto a downward spiral from which they never recovered. The apparent inability of the Sharks players to start off a game with the right intensity and focus became a concern.
They were unlucky on a few occasions, most notably on the overseas tour when refereeing and TMO decisions conspired against them in a few close games, but by the time the tournament started approaching the June window for the internationals, injuries had conspired to make the Sharks team that took the field look completely different to the one that had started the season.
The role that injuries played in their demise was perhaps highlighted after the June window, when a Sharks team bolstered by the return of some key players was unlucky to lose to the SA conference winners, the Bulls, at Loftus before finishing the season with a bit of a flourish. By then Plumtree had taken his leave of the team, with his assistants, Grant Bashford and Hugh Reece-Edwards, filling the role of joint head-coach in what was to be their own final involvement with the team.
Brendan Venter was engaged in a newly created Director of Rugby role in Plumtree’s place, with his brief being to help new coaches Brad MacLeod-Henderson and Sean Everitt in their first season of senior rugby. After an initial hiccup, when they lost to Griquas at home, Venter’s mentoring role paid off, and by adopting percentage rugby tactics, the Sharks were able to finish a comfortable second on the final log behind WP.
Along the way some new stars did emerge, the most trumpeted being Fred Zeilinga, a young flyhalf who had come through the Sharks system and who boasted an accomplished kicking boot. His game management, which included some smartly taken drop-goals, was responsible for a good away win over the Lions. (Very good player this)
The Sharks lost both league games they played against WP, but Venter’s tactical genius was to the fore in the final, where the visitors played the style suited to a competition decider against a host team that was out-thought and out-coached. (Yes and a coach that WP could have had but for race based selection of Alistair - the mind boggles really how we shoot ourselves in the foot!!!!!!!!!!!) Significantly, Pat Lambie was reintroduced for the final, and for the second time he and scrumhalf Charl McLeod were instrumental in beating WP in a domestic decider. That duo had also combined to get the edge over Province in the Durban final in 2010.
It was also a game that saw young Sharks lock Pieter-Steph du Toit confirm his awesome potential, and Venter later spoke about how Du Toit had joined him and the coaches on the Sunday before the final to help find the key to getting the better of the WP lineout system. The Sharks had been dominated in the lineouts in the final league game between the teams in Durban two weeks before the final, as well as in the 2012 decider.
Venter, a doctor who runs a practice in the Strand and who also continued to work as technical director of English club Saracens while he was at the Sharks, was never going to remain involved after October, so it was fortuitous for the Sharks that the Australian Rugby Union turned down Jake White’s application for the Wallabies job.
That has left the way clear for Sharks chief executive John Smit and White to renew the successful partnership they forged as Springbok captain and coach respectively in winning the 2007 World Cup, with White already understood to be cracking the whip at the Durban union as he uses the off-season to get the players fit.
Just appoint Venter as Director of coaching at WP and see the difference. trouble is two great coaches have already walked out.
