The scoreline may suggest an easy win, the Sharks know they were very fortunate. Not only did the home side have some assistance from the match officials — who made a couple of questionable calls at crucial stages in the game — but the Cavaliers were reduced to 13 men at one stage and played almost a quarter of the match a man down.
Even Sharks captain Johann Muller admitted during his post-match reaction that they were well off the required pace, especially in a first half when they plodded to an 11-10 lead at the break.
“If we play like that (against the Blue Bulls in Pretoria) next week, we will get a big hiding,” the Sharks captain said of his team’s below par performance on Friday.
The Sharks deserve credit for securing the bonus point when it seemed a bridge too far, with two tries in as many minutes during injury time giving them a respectable winning margin.
In fact the Sharks scored 21 points, three converted tries, in the final 15 minutes to take the score from 17-13 — with the Cavaliers looking like they may have had a shot at an upset — to the 25-point winning margin at the end.
During the first 65 minutes of the match the men from Durban did not look like a team that could be challenging for overall honours later this year. The Sharks were very scrappy, lacked concentration and wasted a host of scoring opportunities with sloppy handling and generally just very ordinary play.
In fact the first try of the match — by Boland centre Lionel Cornelius in the 20th minute — showed up the lack of commitment from the home side... as he simply busted his way through some ordinary tackling at a time when the Sharks were idling in first gear.
The Sharks got better shape when coach John Plumtree made a number of substitutions early in the second half, including swapping the more experienced Monty Dumond for rookie Andrew Borgen at flyhalf and Skipper Badenhorst for Craig Burden at hooker.
“In fairness to Borgen, we were so poor it was hard for him to look good,” Plumtree said. “When Monty came on we started to play better as a team, but there are a lot of guys in the side who need to look at themselves in the mirror now. |
