It was hard to listen to coach Robert du Preez sit down and give his synopsis on the Sharks’ performance against the Rebels on Saturday night; the passionate coach speaking with a wounded heart about the actions of his child. Not Daniel, who was in the matchday squad, but the Sharks team as a whole, whom he clearly has fatherly feeling towards.
The coach was everything a father who had been let down by a child would be. Enraged, yet disappointed, angry and disheartened. He spoke some harsh word of the team and their performance and labelled it with some stinging utterances.
“It must rate as one of the worse that I have ever seen,” the former Natal and Springbok scrumhalf, whose method of operation has been to bring back the pride of Natal, said after the dreary 9-9 draw.
Du Preez was open and honest, the kind of honesty that is only seen when a person is so shocked and hurt by something that the walls come crumbling down. He was scathing of the game, as well as his players, the attitude and the effort. He felt that they had left every opportunity to win the game out on the field and made it worse with foolish discipline.
Of course, Andre Esterhuizen’s red card springs to mind in a game that saw the Rebels also get a red, as well as two other yellows, but more painful for the coach to bear was Ruan Botha’s indiscretion.
“We scored a try, but the try was turned over because of bad discipline. The penalty from Ruan, around the Rebel’s players neck - costing the try - and the one right at the end when we didn’t look after the breakdown, really disappointing.”
It was not just the individual errors and misdemeanours that irked Du Preez, his team did not react well to the situation as it appeared in front of them, and there was not much leadership shown on the night.
“That was terrible, very disappointed. We would have hoped to have rallied despite the red card, we had all the opportunities in the world to win the game, but we just stuffed it up one opportunity after another,” Du Preez opened up in his assessment.
“It was a complete lack of composure, the red card had a big role to play with that but we do have a lot of experienced rugby players in our team as well, so they should have taken the initiative and leadership.”
It is hard to pinpoint just one aspect of the game that led the Sharks to this now infamous draw against a team that only tasted victory the week prior to this game, but perhaps it was indeed the non-clinical nature of the team’s attacking effort.
Kicks at poles were turned down, quick tap penalties were taken, the ball was never looked after in the rucks, and as such the Sharks failed to make inroads into the Rebels defence, or, indeed, on the scoresheet.
“It is just not good enough, it is not good enough... If you are representing your province in a proud team like the Sharks, and put up this performance, it must rate as one of the worse that I have ever seen. If that doesn’t wake the players up then I don’t know what will.”