‘There was no rugby played tonight’: Sharks must improve for URC quarter-finals

The Sharks finished the league phase of the United Rugby Championship in third place with 13 wins out of 18 games, following their victory over Scarlets and Leinster’s win over Glasgow Warriors on Saturday.

The Sharks held Scarlets off in a tryless 12–3 encounter at Kings Park Stadium that head coach John Plumtree acknowledged was under par afterwards. He identified areas of improvement before their quarter-final against sixth-placed Munster at the end of the month.

Leinster ensured the Sharks’ top-three finish with their own relatively low-scoring 13–5 win over Glasgow at Aviva Stadium in Ireland. It was Glasgow’s third defeat in a row, and they will similarly need to iron out issues before the knockouts.

‘We just had to find another way’

“I sent the message at half time If it’s going to be a crappy fight out there, we’ve got to win that fight,” Plumtree said after the Scarlets win, where his son Taine appeared for the opposition.

“There was no rugby played tonight, the defence was just dominating the attack and there were inaccuracies from both sides. It was one of those games where we just had to get over the line somehow.”

He credited Scarlets for proving strong in defence but said the Sharks know they need to improve.

He said role clarity was missing and players were popping up at the wrong spots. Also, the Sharks were guilty of loose passes and poor tackles.

“Just one more mistake and it almost gets contagious. It’s the same thing when things go well. Tonight, nothing went really well, and we just had to find another way.

“The message at half-time was ‘dominate territory, make sure our set-piece functions and if we get the penalty we take it, and we just find a way to cross the line’.”

Man of the match, Sharks captain Eben Etzebeth had a similar take on what he called a “real Test match”.

“We probably weren’t as clinical as we wanted to be,” he said. “I think we dropped a couple of balls, made errors in our plays… Definitely going to fix that to go further in this competition.”

Sharks raise funds for Cornal Hendricks’ family

Etzebeth spearheaded an initiative where the Sharks players wore special jerseys paying tribute to the late Cornal Hendricks in the warm-up before the game. These will be auctioned for funds for his family.

“A thought that came into my mind last night to try and help his family,” the Sharks captain said. “Obviously, I played with him for a couple of years at the Boks. An unbelievable person, an unbelievable human being off the field. What a wonderful player he was.

“Condolences to his family. I can’t imagine what they are going through.”