So South Africa´s most valuable franchise has gone yet another year without anything to put into an already quite empty trophy case. So let’s have a review of the season shall we, and see what went wrong this time.
At the beginning of the season, it was easy for Sharks fans to feel a bit unsettled on what last season´s second best side had to offer to this year´s Super 14. With World Cup winners like Percy Montgomery, John Smit, Bob Skinstad and Butch James off to greener pastures, it was difficult for anyone to predict how the team would come together. James turned out to be the most missed of all and with Freddie Michalak´s injury, the Sharks were never able to fill the gap he left at No 10. The rest cannot be said about the other positions though — Stefan Tereblanche, Bismarck du Plessis and Jacques Botes really shone as their replacements and deserve a huge amount of credit for filling the void of the missing Springboks.
Coach Dick Muir started the season with an experimental/rotational approach to selecting players in the starting 15 — this had its advantages and saw players having to fight for positions on the field, and it allowed Rory Kockott to win his place as the No 1 scrumhalf in the side, and showed that Francois Steyn was just no good at flyhalf. Muir´s rotational policy was not without its disadvantages though, as it didn´t leave space for the team to gel or develop as a unit, and this was probably one of the bigger factors for the side’s mid-season implosion. It did seem strange that World Cup French star Michalak was used as an impact player off the bench for the first few games, instead of being developed as the No 1 flyhalf that he was – one has to wonder if a Super 14 season is long enough to be using the first part of it to be trying to create depth. Well considering Michalaks´ destiny (an injury putting him out for the tournament), the debate for now looks like it is won by Muir.
Durban´s humidity was explained by Muir as the reason for the Sharks’ conservative and defensive game plan. This approach — although boring — went alright to begin with and won matches at the sacrifice of bonus points. It was overseas where it failed the team. The Sharks only managed to win one of their five games on tour, with their defensive approach just not working against the traditionally expansive nature of New Zealand and Australian rugby in a season where ELVs were introduced.
This was further hampered by the injury of Michalak, which was probably the point where it all started to go downhill. Ruan Pienaar was never comfortable at flyhalf and together with Francois Steyn, the Sharks had some pretty bad decision makers in the backline. Francois Steyn´s boot is an asset to any team but his unwillingness to pass the ball and lack of common sense at important match breaking moments cost the Sharks dearly this season (never mind last season where it cost them the final).
I can´t help but think Steyn would be better positioned at fullback where the focus would be on him using his boot or having a run, the two aspects of play he is better at. JP Pieterson was the victim of a weak Sharks backline and was heavily criticised for his lack of scoring tries this year as compared to 2007, but to be fair to him, he hardly had the ball to do anything with.
An average backline was saved by the Sharks’ strong forward pack which showed off an impressive front row containing one of the strongest props in world rugby. That’s right, crowd favorite ´the beast´. This is a man to keep an eye on, let’s see how he does with the Boks on Saturday. The loose forwards were also impressive and Jacques Botes and Ryan Kankowski will go down with Rory Kockott as the teams best playmakers of the season.
Bad luck plagued the team and Johan Muller´s overseas injury left the team with a lack of leadership in matches where they needed it the most. Two undeserved yellow cards against the Brumbies away also cost the Sharks a match they should have won. In another incident the Sharks were in the lead against the Hurricanes when one of the club’s worst imports of all time, Epi Taione, was red carded for head butting. The player’s past reputation was obviously not given enough thought when being bought in for this year´s tournament, this was to the detriment of the club’s chance of achieving silverware.
It was only in the last two group matches where the Sharks needed five points from each game, that they realised that they could actually be pretty good at scoring tries. When the semi came about, Muir selected an average Francois Steyn over a stong Brad Barrit, which contributed to a more single dimensional backline. A strange late withdrawal of AJ Venter was replaced by Epi Taione before the game, and Muir bizarrely used the player who had not participated in rugby for the previous six weeks (due to his head butting ban) as a focus of his game plan. This failed abysmally with Taione’s ‘butter fingers’ being more suited to an NBA game. The Waratahs’ expansive game plan crushed a tired Sharks team and the match was finished shortly after the first half.
At the end of any season it´s always easy to imagine how things could have turned out for a team if certain things had happened differently, but ultimately the failures of this side fall on themselves and the coaching staff. We can blame the travelling nature of the tournament all we like, but that’s how it´s going to be if we want our local sides to compete internationally. Some individual players really stood out this year and give Pieter de Villiers a lot to work with. I have a feeling that combined with the talent of South Africa´s other franchises, this could be a tri-nations year.
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