Ken Borland

Sharks director of rugby Gary Gold was happy with the result but not entirely satisfied by the performance in relation to the top-class standards he has set, after his team started their SuperRugby campaign with a 43-8 bonus point win over the Southern Kings in Port Elizabeth.

The Sharks struggled in the first half against a tenacious Kings outfit, making numerous basic errors and showing lapses in discipline. They only led 15-8 at the break, with the home side spurning five points via missed kicks at goal, but the Sharks turned it on in the second half, scoring four more impressive tries as they stormed to victory.

“Obviously I’m by and large happy, to get five points on the first weekend is good, but there were a lot of opportunities we didn’t take, which we should have by the standards we set ourselves. I completely understand that you’re not going to get a perfect game first up, but there were some obvious opportunities we wasted,” Gold said.

When the Sharks were able to get quick ball, they looked dangerous, and the likes of Willie le Roux, Paul Jordaan, Joe Pietersen and wings Odwa Ndungane and Lwazi Mvovo broke free in the second half.

“We definitely asked some questions on attack and we’ll get better the longer we are together. The defence was also very good and we scrambled well, but there is definitely room for improvement, especially because we play the Jaguares next, who I thought were very good on the weekend. We’ll need a lot better set-piece,” Gold added.

Ndungane showed he is still a clinical finisher with two tries, with the others going to man of the match Jean-Luc du Preez, who produced another powerhouse performance in the loose trio, Le Roux, Jordaan, who showed very promising signs at outside centre, and Mvovo. Pietersen missed just one kick at goal as he slotted five conversions and a penalty, while also distributing the ball well from flyhalf in the second half.

The Sharks may have enjoyed an impressive pre-season tour to France while the Southern Kings, their opening opponents in SuperRugby this weekend, endured shambolic preparation, but the KwaZulu-Natal side’s director of rugby, Gary Gold, has warned that the Eastern Cape team should not be taken for granted, especially with Rassie Erasmus consulting for them.

Erasmus and his mobi-unit of top specialists were in Port Elizabeth in January to help Kings coach Deon Davids fast-track their preparations and the word from their camp is that they feel ready to compete. The Sharks will be the first team to test that readiness and Gold said they would be cautious.

“It’s exactly the same situation we had with the Cheetahs last year in our first game, so we do not take the Southern Kings lightly as a team. Deon Davids is a good coach and he would have got great help from Rassie and the mobi-unit. And they’ll be desperate to prove their detractors wrong.

“We have to make sure we don’t slip up like we did against the Cheetahs last year. We’re just trying to stay away from expectations and focus on what we do well. The two games in France have shown us how far we’ve come in certain areas. We had a very clear strategy in our pre-season in terms of how we prepared: We really put time and energy into four or five areas which we hope will have the most effect on the game,” Gold told The Citizen.

The Sharks beat Toulon 29-21 and Toulouse 31-17, but Gold said the results were only of secondary importance to how they played and he was very satisfied with their performance. With the time now available before their first SuperRugby game on Saturday, they will brush up on the areas that have not received as much attention.

“It’s not about the results but the performance and I was very satisfied with the things we worked on, we got reward for those, we’ll bank those, but now it’s time to sharpen the pencil. It’s now time to focus on other areas and we know that if we don’t put time and energy into those then we’ll come a cropper, so those areas will develop.

“We scored five tries and three tries in the two games, so I’m happy with that. Toulon could only score through driving mauls against us, three times, but we hadn’t worked on that yet.

“People ask how we want to play, well, first and foremost we want to win and the foundation for winning is a solid defence. That’s one of the areas where I feel we’ve made good progress, it was a helluva lot more consistent. Defence is where a team shows its camaraderie, whether they’re willing to fight for each other. As a coaching staff, we’re very excited because we’ve put our faith in this young group and they’ve repaid us,” Gold said.

“Our players are being evicted, collecting food vouchers and there have been marriages ending in divorce.”

“Many of our staff and players, especially those from out of town, have no money for food and some have children. They cannot pay their rent, they cannot buy fuel – the situation is now beyond desperate.”

These are just two of the forlorn pleas made by people involved in the Eastern Province rugby team in response to the shameful fiasco that has seen them not being paid for the last three months.

The intervention of the South African Rugby Union, that has taken over control of the Southern Kings franchise which is set to return to Super Rugby next year, also seems to have merely fanned the flames of the crisis.

The national body has been accused by one anonymous player of being “corrupt” and “colluding with the South African Rugby Players’ Association” in effectively creating a new team that will exclude Eastern Province players and avoid the debts owed to them.Saru, however, have said around half the 42-man squad will come from the existing Eastern Province team.

“We have been working as hard as we can to put a workable plan into place, but we are unable to go into all the player details right now as we still have to confirm some contracts and tie up loan arrangements. But, considering when we started and from what base, I am very pleased with where we have come.

“I believe we are putting together a more-than-competent squad that will not only be representative of the region, but coincidentally meets the targets of our Strategic Transformation Plan four years ahead of schedule. The squad we have identified will have around 50% black players, while the management team is more than 50% black. Our rugby department has picked the best available talent,” Saru CEO Jurie Roux said when he announced the rescue plan to ensure the Southern Kings are operational come Super Rugby time.

But the EP players have rejected Saru’s plan as it will not deal with money owed to them, will force them to take a pay-cut and leaves half their number high and dry. They are also extremely unhappy that controversial president Cheeky Watson is rumoured to still be involved in the running of the Super Rugby squad.

In the meantime, Watson has reportedly closed the Eastern Province Rugby Union offices a week earlier than expected, sending all the staff away on their Christmas holidays with no money and no idea when they will be paid.

Supporters of the Kings have started raising money for the beleaguered players via the Red&Black Army Facebook page.

The Southern Kings bounced back in impressive fashion, providing South Africa’s only victory in the weekend’s Vodacom SuperRugby action, as they pulled off a hard-fought 34-27 win over the Highlanders in Port Elizabeth.

The tenacious victory lifted the gloom somewhat after a weekend in which the Sharks, Cheetahs and Stormers all lost, giving the Bulls, who had a bye, a handy five-point lead in the South African Conference.

Under the inspiring leadership of Luke Watson, the Kings were clinical and composed under pressure, scoring after the half-time hooter to reclaim the lead and then dominating the third quarter to open up a commanding 34-17 lead. They then had to rely on heroic defence to keep out sustained pressure from a defiant Highlanders team that threw everything into attack.

Tries by centre Shaun Treeby and wing Hosea Gear forced the Kings to defend with all their might to claim their third victory of the season and climb to 13th in the overall standings.

While the way the Kings managed to rebound from their 72-10 mauling at the hands of the Waratahs last weekend was highly admirable, credit too must go to their supporters, who still turned up in droves, 18,500 of them, to back their team.

“A lot of credit must go to the crowd – we got absolutely pumped last week and to see this crowd here – it’s thanks to the supporters for turning up. We really appreciate the support.

“We were able to bounce back and showed a lot of character,” Watson, who scored two tries from rolling mauls, said after the game.

Outstanding loose forward Cornell du Preez and scrumhalf Shaun Venter then scored second-half tries to earn the Kings their second try-scoring bonus point of the season.

The Sharks and Stormers both lost in Australia, to the Reds and Waratahs respectively and now have a slim chance of making the playoffs, never mind tussling for the Conference title as they were expected to at the start of the campaign.

The Sharks once again made a dreadful start, lacking focus and any steel in defence, and the Reds, who showed superb vision and efficiency on attack, punished them ruthlessly, running up a 29-3 lead in 34 minutes as they scored four beautiful tries.

The Sharks were much better in the second half and pushed the Reds when they fought back to 29-17 with 15 minutes remaining, but Quade Cooper, who orchestrated the Queenslanders’ attack with customary panache, then settled the outcome when he kicked a penalty 72 minutes into the game.

The Stormers went down 21-15 to the Waratahs in Sydney and coach Allister Coetzee said he felt the “bounce of the ball” was just not going their way as they slumped to their second consecutive defeat and their sixth in 10 games.

“The bounce of the ball really does not favour us at this point in time, but one must give credit to the Waratahs. They kept their composure and they stuck it out to the end. It was a Test-match situation, it was a physical game, but they fronted up until the end,” he said.

But he perhaps gave away what the Stormers’ problem is at the moment – they are relying on things just happening for them – trusting that their brilliant defence will force mistakes from the opposition, rather than making opportunities themselves.

The Stormers made 155 tackles to the 77 of the Waratahs and that just proves that they made far too many errors, gifting too much possession to the home side.

Although they made a strong start to the second half and still led 15-11 going into the last five minutes, they were defending with their backs to the wall in the final quarter and it was Israel Folau and Berrick Barnes who eventually made the breakthrough for Folau to score his seventh try of the season.

The Cheetahs, meanwhile, lost 39-34 to the Hurricanes in Bloemfontein and were guilty of playing the wrong game, trying to beat the visitors at their own high-tempo, ball-in-hand approach.

The ascendancy of the Cheetahs in the tight phases demanded that they squeeze the Hurricanes and play the territory game, but instead the “old” Cheetahs reappeared.

The tactical kicking was poor, the attack was more a lateral shifting of the ball from side-to-side rather than anything incisive and direct, and the defence was below the high standards the Cheetahs have set recently.

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