Ken Borland

As if the dismal performance over the weekend was not bad enough for Sharks supporters, there was even worse news on Tuesday as Pat Lambie was ruled out for six weeks and Jean Deysel received a seven-week suspension after his stupid red card against the Crusaders.

Captain Lambie has injured his neck vertebrae and his absence continues the curse of the captaincy for the Sharks. Bismarck du Plessis was named as the captain for the season but is currently suspended for an idiotic act of foul play, which his replacement, Deysel, has now replicated. Another member of the leadership team, Francois Steyn, is also suspended for a dangerous tip-tackle.

Eighthman Ryan Kankowski now looks certain to be handed the poisoned chalice and the responsibility of leading his team away from the precipice. Although, as director of rugby Gary Gold points out, the Sharks are still handily placed in the competition – in seventh place on 19 points, the same as conference leaders the Bulls, who do however have a game in hand – there is little doubt that they are standing at a crossroads.

If the Sharks don’t change direction, quickly rediscover some heart and sense of team purpose, then their season will probably sink without a trace. Alternatively, beating the high-flying Lions in Johannesburg this weekend would be just the tonic required to allow them to start forgetting about all the travails of the last few weeks.

Gold is not trying to make excuses but is also not just going to throw in the towel.

“It is an emotional time and it is a challenging week for us. People point at the scoreboard, and that is how it should be. But I honestly feel this adversity gives us an opportunity for real growth.

“We will fix it. I believe in these players, it is a great group of guys. We are just not playing well at the moment and nobody can deny that. But we are still in the hunt. It is not the end of the world, we are not in the bottom half of the table. We are just going to have to show some character. We are going to have to step up to the plate. It is as simple as that,” Gold said.

Lambie’s replacement at flyhalf is likely be Fred Zeilinga, who has shown he is not out of his depth in Super Rugby, while Renaldo Bothma should return to the starting line-up to replace Deysel.

It’s been a big year for Trevor Fisher Junior and he could cap it all in the Chase to the Investec Cup Final over the weekend as he goes into the defence of his title at number one in the standings and with his eyes set once again on the R3.5 million bonus pool first prize.

Although it was undoubtedly a valiant effort by the Springboks, they can’t feel hard done by after their exit from the World Cup at the hands of the All Blacks in their semi-final at Twickenham over the weekend.

It is often said that you can’t play rugby without the ball and that is also true of territory: against top defensive patterns like New Zealand have, you’re not going to be causing many problems if you’re playing from your own half all the time.

South Africa only had 33% territory against the All Blacks – in other words two-thirds of the game was played in their own half. We saw magnificent defence from the Springboks, but we didn’t see anything else. As predicted before the game, they could only offer one-off ball-carriers, strong as they were, and no variety to their attacking play.

Much of the territory problems came down to poor exit strategies. When your scrumhalf is chiefly responsible for clearing your lines via a box-kick from the base – which by its very nature is going to be a higher, shorter kick – then you’re not going to be gaining as much ground compared to when your flyhalf, with a bit more space, can fire a long, raking touchfinder off after a couple of phases. It’s become a bugbear of mine, but Handre Pollard has a massive boot, why wasn’t it used more to drive the All Blacks back?!

The Springboks were hoping that their physicality would wear down the All Blacks, but that’s not going to happen when the opposition can match you physically and is better conditioned. In fact, it is the defending champions who did all of the wearing down, because they constantly asked different questions of the defence, as Nick Mallett pointed out.

“The All Blacks tried to attack in a variety of ways – they had Julian Savea coming off his wing, they played off nine, then they tried going to the backs with Conrad Smith and Ma’a Nonu carrying the ball, then they went to pick-and-goes and they even tried grubbers. They kept on trying different things, which keeps the pressure on the defence. They don’t just have one game plan, they have a whole variety of attacking options and we were beaten by a better team. We were lucky it was a very wet day,” Mallett said on SuperSport after the game.

There is understandably some negativity around South African rugby at the moment, but I believe our glasses aren’t just half-full of talent, they are full to overflowing, as shown by some of the wonderful Currie Cup rugby produced by the Lions, Western Province and Blue Bulls.

Experienced, visionary coaches are a bit thinner on the ground, but appointing Heyneke Meyer as Springbok coach again is not going to take our rugby forward. The high-intensity, ball-in-hand game plan which Meyer flirted with and then ditched is the way forward, but he clearly does not believe in it and/or cannot coach it.

Two of the most promising young coaches in the country, Nollis Marais of the Bulls and John Dobson of Western Province, have both gone on record in the last couple of weeks as saying the Lions’ brand of rugby, which is all about laying a platform up front and then using the ball while playing what is in front of you, is the way forward.

Lady Luck is a fickle mistress in the arena of top-level sport, but she seldom favours the team that isn’t willing to try anything; the team that hardly plays any rugby at all.

The Eastern Province Kings team played with white armbands in their Currie Cup match against the Blue Bulls in Pretoria over the weekend to support their fellow players and the coaching staff who have not been paid for a month, captain Tim Whitehead revealed after the match.

“We were wearing white armbands because only the 22 who played in this game have been paid and we wanted show our support for the coaching staff and the non-playing members of the squad who haven’t been paid for over a month,” Whitehead announced, unprompted, at the post-match press conference.

The Kings produced a superb first half before ultimately being beaten 48-27 by the Bulls.

The Kings team began the Currie Cup campaign having not been paid for months and went on a mini-strike in August as they had still not received their due money. The crisis continued in September but less than a week ago, the Aveng group were announced as new sponsors of the Kings.

But it is more than two months since EP Rugby president Cheeky Watson announced that the signing of “possibly the biggest sponsorship partnership for any franchise this country has ever seen” was “imminent”.