Durban: “What style of rugby can we expect from the Sharks?” From bars to braais around the country, this has probably been the most common question among rugby fans since the new coaching appointments at the Shark Tank towards the end of last year.
This evening (5.05pm kick-off), the Sharks will have the opportunity to put their plans and promises of high-intensity rugby into practice when they take on the Cheetahs in their Super Rugby season-opener at Kings Park. But this does not mean they will forsake substance for style.
For one, the Cheetahs are a team who love a ball-in-hand game – they have been descri-bed as arguably South Africa’s most skilful team – and have players like Sarel Pretorius and Willie le Roux who are devastating opportunists from broken play.
Then there’s the typical humidity factor in Durban, when handling a slippery, sweaty ball can become almost as difficult as keeping Julius Malema quiet in parliament.
But first and foremost, the Sharks will need to rely on their pack to lay down the sort of platform that will allow some of their exciting backs to benefit from front-foot ball.
Sharks director of rugby Gary Gold said they would need to produce a well-balanced performance.
“We want to play an exciting and attacking brand of rugby. We think we need to score more tries regularly to progress further, but it comes down to decision-making in the right areas of the field when opportunities present themselves.
“It’s about having real intensity and being accurate in the first four phases or so when most tries are scored. If our quality of execution is good, then we can hurt the opposition. It’s a balancing act, a decision-making exercise, but with the core of senior players we have, I’m excited about the fact that we will make more good decisions than bad ones.”
Gold acknowledged that embracing an attacking game did not come without risks, but he said this was why they had spent so much of the pre-season focused on skills-work and high-intensity training.
“I want us to be a team that can execute as best we can. It’s a tough task. We’ve said this is the type of rugby we want to play, but it’s not easy, and it’s why so many teams don’t play that kind of rugby.
“If it goes wrong, it can go badly wrong, but we want to put time and energy into getting that right, we want to up-skill our players. We’ve spent more time working on skills than any other South African franchise I’ve been involved with.”
The Sharks will hope to reap the fruits of their labour, but they will also be wary of a dangerous Cheetahs team that has typically flown under the radar during the pre-season. Just ask the Crusaders, who got caught out by the unheralded Rebels in Christchurch yesterday.
The Cheetahs have lost a host of players since last season, but they’ve quietly gone about re-building their squad, and it’s a well-balanced team that will take to the King’s Park turf today. - Saturday Star