Ken Borland

Even though the Sharks have had the schedule from hell, they will go into the June international break still very much in the playoff mix following their 53-0 romp over the Southern Kings in Durban at the weekend, much to the delight of coach Gary Gold.

The Sharks are second in Africa Conference 2, just two points behind the Lions, and third in the Group, three points ahead of the Stormers, although they have played one more game than the three other top local sides and have a bye this coming weekend.

“I’m very satisfied and particularly pleased tonight that we got the bonus point and kept the opposition to zero. We knew the last six weeks would be tough, playing on three different continents in three weeks, but I’m really happy with the attitude of the players and how they’ve dealt with all the travel. It has been tough and it’s taken its toll, but to be as competitive as we have been, especially against the New Zealand sides, is very pleasing.

“The guys have shown a lot of character and now they have a bit of downtime. We can fix the guys that are broken and hopefully get some big names back. It’s good that we can try and keep our noses ahead rather than play catch-up,” Gold said.

The Sharks played some tremendous rugby in the first half against the Kings, getting the ball wide and scoring six tries, including three in a dazzling five-minute spell midway through the half. But they went off the boil in the second half and Gold said one of the things that still concern him is the team’s tendency to waste chances.

“We had a very specific plan at the start, you never want to get into an arm-wrestle against a side as courageous as the Kings, and we controlled things nicely in the first half and took our chances. Not so much in the second half, maybe there were too many changes, but it was a bit disappointing. The Kings are a never-say-die side, especially in the contact situations, and we lost a lot of ball.

“We didn’t take our chances as clinically and the lineout didn’t function as well. We need to step up, we are not the finished product, there are simple options not being taken. We tend to over-complicate things, if we take the simple options we will score more tries,” Gold said.

These have been interesting times for the organisers of the co-sanctioned events that highlight the summer golf season in South Africa, but the Sunshine Tour is expected to release details of at least the first half of the lucrative schedule this week.

The delay has mainly been due to the uncertainty of when to stage the South African Open, the flagship event of the summer and one for which the Sunshine Tour recently regained the commercial rights.

Unfortunately, the European Tour shifted their Volvo World Matchplay Championship from May to this week in the schedule, pushing their Tour Championship out to November 20-23, the week which had been used by the SA Open in recent years.

In what they described as “a shift in golf sponsorship strategy to focus on customers”, this will be the last time Volvo sponsor the famous matchplay event and they have also pulled the plug on the European Tour’s tournament of winners, the Volvo Golf Champions, which has been hosted by South Africa for the last three years.

While the loss of a high-profile European Tour event like that is obviously a great pity, it has left a gap in the schedule that could well now be filled by the SA Open.

January 8-11, 2015, is now the likely date of the SA Open and the talk amongst the pros is that Glendower Golf Club will once again host the prestigious event, for which big developments are expected in the near future.

The Sunshine Tour could lose another co-sanctioned event with the Nelson Mandela Championship in doubt due to both sponsorship and scheduling issues, taking the number of European Tour events in South Africa this summer down to six.

The Nedbank Golf Challenge will continue its strong new relationship with the European Tour from December 4-7 at Sun City, with the Alfred Dunhill Championship at Leopard Creek being held the following week.

Insiders say the Joburg, Africa and Tshwane Opens should all take place next year, although scheduling challenges do exist.

If the Nelson Mandela Championship does get the go-ahead, it could be staged at the Wild Coast Sun, moving from Durban, according to the professionals.