There was a sad moment in the second half of the Sharks’ 48-15 Super Rugby capitulation to the Highlanders at the weekend which said it all.
There was the ball bouncing about in the Sharks’ in-goal area after a line-out scramble, with Conrad Hoffman bumbling after if it like a farmer trying to catch a runaway pig, when a burly Highlanders forward darted around the replacement scrumhalf and dived onto the ball for the Kiwis’ seventh try.
It took one back to the pre-season at Kings Park when the catchword at training from the coaching staff was “urgency”. This year was supposed to be about just that – greater commitment to the 50-50 ball than the competitors. That would give the Durban team the edge.
Funny that, because when the Sharks took 50 points from the Crusaders a month ago, coach Gary Gold said the difference between the sides was that same word again, “urgency.” He said: “Why were we watching the ball bouncing about instead of diving on it ...”
Why indeed? Poor Gary Gold. I pity him because he is a genuinely good rugby man who finds himself at the wrong end of a chain of events that started long before his appointment.
Between the first Crusaders try at Kings Park a month ago and the seventh try scored by the Highlanders on Friday, in two games, Kiwi teams had scored 15 tries in 80 minutes of playing time – or a try every five and half minutes!
Gold is a good, solid bloke and he should not be the scapegoat for a team who have been in decline for some time.
The great dummy thrown to the Sharks supporters in 2013, a few months after the clear-out in the upper corridors of Kings Park, was the Currie Cup title win at Newlands, orchestrated by then coach Brendan Venter, who had agreed to help out John Smit while he found a long-term successor to John Plumtree, controversially sacked not long after Smit took office on July 1, 2013.
To be fair to Smit, he wanted to tell Plumtree in person that he was no longer part of the plans, and an unbiased critic would agree that the Plumtree era had run its course, but before Smit could meet ‘Plum’, Nick Mallett honestly answered a media question as to whether he had been sounded out for the Sharks job. He said he had, but preferred work as an analyst with SuperSport.
Smit and the Sharks board have been ducking bouncers ever since. An impeccable source on the Sharks board yesterday said that when Smit took over as CEO, the franchise simply did not have the money to buy new players to carry the team through an envisaged difficult transition period.
The bottom line is that when Smit took over from the sage veteran BJ van Zyl, the new broom swept clean a little bit sooner than it should have because a coaching successor beyond “stand-in” Venter had not been secured.
It is uncertain why the stated six-month “hand-over, take-over period” between Smit and Van Zyl did not take place, but if it had, Smit might have made different decisions. Smit could well grow into one of the great CEOs, but he will look back on his two-year tenure and agree that he has learned a lot.
After Venter finished up, the Sharks hierarchy had a lifeline when former Springbok coach Jake White, miffed that he did not get the Wallabies job after the sacking of Robbie Deans, agreed to dump the Brumbies for the Sharks.
It was manna from heaven for the scratching Sharks, but they were not to know that White would prove massively unpopular among players and staff alike. Not long before the 2014 season kick-off, a member of the Sharks coaching staff told me that the players had been drilled so heavily “army style” that half of them would break down before mid-season. Seven weeks into the season, 17 had suffered hamstring injuries.
White indeed brought discipline to the Sharks, and they made the semi-finals, but he also brought discontent and he was ultimately forced out because nobody wanted to work with him, from the players to the coaching staff.
But to cut to the chase, White’s sudden departure left the Sharks rudderless only months before the 2015 Super Rugby competition. Gold, Smit’s Bok forward coach between 2008 and 2011 under head coach Peter de Villiers, got the job.
Gold, by his own frank admission, only joined the team in the week before the competition kicked off because he had to fulfil his commitments in Japan.
So we had a coach taking the team into Super Rugby having known the players only a week.
Last week, consultant Venter admitted: “The Sharks’ players are making every defensive error in the book, and I really had hoped that they would have kept the basics of the system of the Jake era. They have not.”
The lack of defensive structure is only where it starts. Attack? Why, against the Highlanders, were the Sharks kicking way ball to arguably the most skilful counter-attacking team in Super Rugby? Because they did not know what else to do with the ball ...?
The midfield of Andre Esterhuizen and JP Pietersen were cumbersome, if I might be complimentary, and it was good news on a bleak weekend that the skilful Paul Jordaan made his comeback in a Vodacom Cup match after a year out with a broken hip.
Flyhalf Patrick Lambie is two weeks away and centre Frans Steyn is freed from suspension this week to play against the Hurricanes.
But we are clutching at straws. Where does all this leave the Sharks in 2015?
Well, it is hard to see them winning too many more games. They need to show pride in seeing out this shocker of a season, and then post-World Cup, when the best in the business are coming out of contract, a hard-nosed head coach should be appointed.
And what has happened to the Sharks Academy? Is that a money-making machine or a genuine factory of stars?
Remember Rudolf Straueli? Much maligned when he was Springbok coach, but over a decade he was productive indeed behind the scenes at the Sharks in terms of procuring talent. Look what he is doing as boss of the Lions, along with the former coach of the Sharks Academy, Swys de Bruin, who is Johan Ackermann’s second-in command. – The Sunday Independent