Ja, it must be really frustrating to be Hooker and AE, playing in a dysfunctional sharks backline. Let’s look at the culprits. You have a certain demographic that has some amazing agility and speed but the have absolutely poor team spirit. The Irish commentator summed it up best, they are playing at ones and two’s. Always trying fancy stuff rather than playing as a team and understanding your role. It looks great if you can slice through defenders but it means nothing when you get isolated and ran away from your support. Like we saw Kolisi break free only to get isolated. The Hendriks brothers are just on another planet. Dopey Jayden with his stupid no look grabbers, when it works it looks amazing but when it doesn’t which is more like 99 out of hundred.
the stormers players are also guilty of this.
Then look at the bulls. The entire backline touches the ball and try to find players and space on the field. That try assist was pure class. A winger mopping up the ball from a poor Jayden kick, he brought the ball up trying to get other players to link with him he was then able to at pace use the cross field kick which found moody perfectly for a try. That was a winger doing that.
where as some players and I will call it out, the black players just don’t know how to play as a team. They are all playing for themselves. The bulls work because the players understand each other and they know how to play what they have been coached.
Yes, Mpimpi made a lot of running meters and a lot of line breaks, but what was the end result of all those darting runs. Nothing. He just got turned over or lost all momentum. Then, if they run out of ideas they just end up kicking the ball away where as Leinster averages 7 passes for every kick where as the other teams it is 4. For South African teams it is probably higher.
Andre Esterhuizen and Hooker need to leave the sharks and let them continue to play their “attacking” rugby.
AE was hugely successful at Quinn’s. At one point he won 6 MoM in a row. How ever, it allowed players like Marcus smit to thrive off him, but quins only had a a couple of players that played off the cuff where as with the sharks you have two players in Hooker and AE that just does the hard work and the rest thinking it is there show.