Ken Borland

The Sharks have been the form team in South African rugby this year but following six months of Lockdown their daily focus has just been on returning to basics and trying to get sharper every day, according to star flyhalf Curwin Bosch.

How quickly the Sharks can regain the brilliance and momentum that took them to the top of the Super Rugby standings will be put to the test on Saturday when they take on a revamped Bulls side on SuperFan Saturday at Loftus Versfeld. Bosch was also the form flyhalf in South Africa before Lockdown and, with Handre Pollard out of rugby for the rest of the year, there will be plenty of focus on his own form with the Springbok No.10 jersey in mind.

“It will be tough for all of us to get that momentum back and it’s all about starting back at the basics once again. Saturday is the perfect opportunity for us to sharpen up our game and try out a couple of things we have been working on. We’re not looking too far ahead, we’re just going to take it game-by-game and hopefully we will improve every week.

“It’s great to be back and these are exciting times, but our bodies are still adjusting to contact and it’s going to be different with no crowds. Our approach this week is a bit different because we are preparing for the SuperRugby/Currie Cup competition that is coming up. But why change what we have been doing when obviously we have been doing something right?” Bosch said in a virtual interview on Tuesday.

The 23-year-old with two Test caps says the Sharks’ game-plan will once again revolve around playing a high-tempo game. Being at the fulcrum of that can only help Bosch’s chances of Springbok selection and he is surely closing the gap between himself and Elton Jantjies, who has been the spearhead of the Lions’ energetic style of play for so many years.

“We want to play with speed and tempo, so it’s going to be an interesting clash with the Bulls, because if you look along the lines of who they have signed, we expect a very physical game from their massive pack. I think the Bulls are going to try and slow us down, have a lot of set-pieces, while we will try to speed things up. We’re not looking to change much, just fine-tune what we’ve been trying to do.

“Personally, I’ve had a different approach this year with my main focus being on the Sharks and trying to help the team succeed. If I do that then Springbok selection will take care of itself. But I do see a bit of an opportunity to play number 10. It’s always my dream to play for the Springboks, that’s why I decided to stay at the Sharks. It was easy because we have become a special team in the last year,” Bosch says.

By all accounts (and there have been many in the last week), Pat Lambie enjoyed a very good international career, playing 56 Tests, going to two World Cups and scoring 153 points for the Springboks. But there are many excellent judges who believe South African rugby still never got as much out of the Sharks flyhalf as they should have.

Despite a fine record of delivering when it mattered most, as well as performing at a level of consistency that all the great flyhalves have, Lambie only made 22 starts for the Springboks and was seldom given a decent run of games in which to establish himself. In fact, Lambie only once started five Tests in a row and that was at fullback in 2011, from the last two games of the Rugby Championship through the World Cup.

In his favoured position of flyhalf, Lambie never played more than three games on the trot in the number 10 jersey, on the end-of-year European tours of 2012 and 2014.

“Pat was an exceptional rugby player and as the dust settles on his premature retirement and people reflect back, I think many will realise he was the one that got away. No Springbok coach really made him his number one, nailed his flag to the mast and said Pat is my number one flyhalf. But we saw it in Super Rugby and Currie Cup finals that Pat was at his best in important games.

“He wasn’t picked consistently enough, even though he never let the side down, and then they moved him between fullback and flyhalf when he should have just been at flyhalf. It’s a great pity and it was disappointing, I know Dick Muir always said we must just put him in and play him when we were assistants together with the Springboks,” current USA coach Gary Gold, a member of the Springboks’ coaching team from 2008-2011 and head coach of the Sharks between 2014-2016, told Saturday Citizen.

As former Springbok captain and inside centre Jean de Villiers attests, Lambie was the sort of player a coach and team could rely on week after week.

“Pat would always just get the job done, he had that ability to perform under pressure, as that massive kick against the All Blacks showed. He was a fantastic player and his personality came through on the field in that he stayed calm in the big moments. He was the biggest gentleman in world rugby but he still performed with authority, he could leave his mark on the game.

“He was the sort of flyhalf who could dominate and control the game. I’ll never forget the 2010 Currie Cup final and his brilliant performance against us [Western Province] that showed his class. On two end-of-year tours we played 10 and 12 next to each other and we only lost one game, showing that Pat could really get the job done in difficult conditions,” De Villiers said.

And yet Heyneke Meyer, the Springbok coach who took over in 2012, binned Lambie to the bench at the start of the 2013 international season and again for the 2015 Rugby Championship.

Meyer has spoken warmly this week about his appreciation for Lambie’s talents and his personality in the team space, but he did perhaps let slip why he was reluctant to fully trust Lambie.

“As we all know, he wasn’t the biggest rugby player ever [1.77m, 86kg], but he had a serious all-round game and that included a very solid tackle and commitment. He would put his body on the line 100% of the time, never shied away from the contact side of things, and was safe under a high ball as well.

“Pat is way up there with the best talents I ever coached, but I will say this without any doubt at all: there was no better human being in my Bok squads. Wherever he has gone in the world professionally, he has quickly come to be considered one of the most likeable guys in the fold. I never coached a guy with better manners than him,” Meyer told Sport24.

That Lambie is a top-class human being is a recurring theme when speaking to people who know him well. Former Springbok captain Gary Teichmann had a different relationship with the Michaelhouse product as CEO of the Sharks, but is just as effusive in his praise.

“Pat is a guy with incredible ability but easy to deal with. He says it as it is, there’s never an angle with him, and it was always a very easy conversation with him – he’s all about honesty and transparency,” Teichmann said.

But more than that, he was a phenomenal rugby player, with the well-travelled Gold comparing him to a legend of the game like Jonny Wilkinson.

“Pat was potentially our Jonny Wilkinson, he probably has the same dimensions and Joel Stransky and Dan Carter were also not the biggest flyhalves. What Wilkinson did for England, I believe Pat could have done for South Africa because he’s a similar player and personality,” Gold said.

https://citizen.co.za/sport/south-african-sport/sa-rugby-sport/2072068/the-inconvenient-truth-about-pat-lambie/

Blue Bulls flyhalf Tian Schoeman says he is going into Saturday’s Currie Cup semi-final against Western Province way more confident than last year, especially since he has a more mature pack in front of him now.

Last year the young Bulls side were beaten 23-18 by underdogs Western Province, who used a more experienced pack to exert pressure in the set-pieces and forward exchanges and won the territory battle, but this weekend the home side are a more accomplished side with a big pack that has excelled in the scrums and lineouts in recent matches.

“I’ve got two Currie Cups behind me now and a bit of Super Rugby, so I’m more confident. I was quite stressed out this time last year and we didn’t know what to expect, especially in a semi-final. So I’m definitely a bit calmer now although there are of course still some nerves,” Schoeman told The Citizen on Wednesday.

“I’m also a lot more relaxed because it’s lekker to play with a dominant pack in front of you. Our forwards have really stepped up and in the last few games the set-pieces have been very good. We’ve been getting a lot of results from the scrums with pushover tries and the lineouts have been very good as well. That’s going to be very important for the semi-final because you need the set-piece to attack from.”

The Bulls scored four more tries than Western Province during the league phase of the competition and have focused on a more ball-in-hand, high-intensity approach than in previous years. Nobody is more important than the flyhalf in driving the game plan and Schoeman said they will stick to what has served them well in the competition thus far.

“We’ve decided not to change anything, we’re going to stick to what we’ve been trying to do. It’s a bit more running rugby and maybe a bit more risky, but we don’t want to give Western Province the opportunity to play. So we’re only going to kick when in trouble, but those exits need to be accurate because you don’t want to give the other team opportunities,” Schoeman said.

The competitiveness of some of the Sharks’ youngsters will be on display early on in the Currie Cup with the suspension of Garth April for a breach of team protocol allowing 19-year-old Curwin Bosch an early chance to shine in the flyhalf position against the Pumas in Nelspruit on Friday.

The exact nature of April’s ill-discipline has not been revealed but it is obviously another blow to an exciting prospect whose game has gone dramatically backwards since his inclusion in the Springbok squad as more of an observer than anything else, culminating in a shellshocked display in the awful Wellington weather in the SuperRugby quarterfinal against the Hurricanes.

Bosch, a star member of the South African team at the Junior World Cup in June, made three appearances off the bench in SuperRugby, while he will have two debutants outside him in the backline in wing Neil Maritz and outside centre Lukhanyo Am.

“There’s great competition with the youngsters, which is fantastic. Hopefully we can expose them at that level and they will learn a lot. We’re blessed to have basically the same pack as in SuperRugby, which will give us great confidence, but there are a couple of new guys in the backline. But I’m very excited and positive about what lies ahead,” coach Robert du Preez said.

The former Springbok scrumhalf said he hoped some of the attacking ambition that was unborn in SuperRugby would now come to fruition in the Currie Cup.

“We had a good SuperRugby season, the focus was on sorting out our defence and I think we did that quite successfully, although we did leak tries towards the end of the competition. But the Currie Cup is certainly about attacking rugby, that’s our focus now. Defence is obviously a major part of what a team is about, but we want to play rugby that inspires,” Du Preez said.

Sharks team – Odwa Ndungane, Neil Maritz, Lukhanyo Am, Andre Esterhuizen, S’bura Sithole, Curwin Bosch, Michael Claassens, Philip van der Walt, Jean-Luc du Preez, Keegan Daniel (c), Stephan Lewies, Etienne Oosthuizen, Lourens Adriaanse, Franco Marais, Dale Chadwick. Bench: Chiliboy Ralepelle, Thomas du Toit, Ruan Botha, Tera Mtembu, Stefan Ungerer, Innocent Radebe, Heimar Williams.