In the Cell C Sharks’ three Carling Currie Cup matches before the clash against the Airlink Pumas on Friday night, they had scored 11 tries.

They could not score a try against the home team at Mbombela Stadium in 80 minutes.

The Pumas defended well, but their discipline let them down and Sharks’ fly half, man-of-the-match Boeta Chamberlin, kicked eight penalties.

The Pumas conceded 15 penalties to the Sharks’ five.

The half-time score was 12-10 and the final score was 24-10 to the Sharks.

The Pumas’ points came from a penalty kick by Tinus de Beer and a try by flanker Anele Lungisa, which De Beer converted.

The try was a spectacular piece of attacking play with the Pumas running the ball from their own goal line, through various passes and two phases.

In the 35th minute, the Pumas were defending on their try line. Eddie Fouché gained possession and gave a deft chip kick, which he collected and passed to Tapiwa Mafura.

The full back gained a few metres and drew the tackler before offloading to Alwayno Visagie who ran 25 metres and then passed to Lucky Dlepu, who beat Marnus Potgieter’s attempted tackle and passed the ball to Daniel Maartens. The flanker beat a defender and made a short inside pass back to Dlepu, who was tackled six metres from the try line.

The Pumas recycled quickly. Sebastian de Klerk stood in at scrum half and passed blindside to Visagie, who flipped the ball into the hands of Lungisa, who went over in the right corner.

The 1 600 people in attendance got their money’s worth from this 25 seconds of brilliance.

But on the night, the Sharks were the better side. The Pumas battled against the visitors’ scrum and did not have the quality possession needed to create scoring opportunities.

“If you lose your set pieces, you cannot get the backs to run with the ball,” said the Pumas’ captain, Willie Engelbrecht, after the game. The eighthman said the Pumas’ chance of making the semi-finals was not over.

“I still believe we have a strong team to compete. We have to finish off our moves and set pieces and we will start doing better,” he said.

The Sharks are second on the log table with 18 points. The Airlink Pumas are in sixth place with five points from five matches.

The Pumas will play away against DHL Western Province on Wednesday March 23 at 15:00.