Ken Borland

Having staged a stirring comeback to level the scores at 27-27, the Sharks were meant to keep possession and force a penalty in the final stages of their nailbiting United Rugby Championship quarterfinal against the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld, coach Sean Everitt said.

They were also meant to avoid giving the Bulls the ball in their own 22. Sadly for the Sharks, they failed to do both things and the Bulls snatched victory with an 84^th-minute drop goal.

“The team is hurting and extremely disappointed,” a gutted Everitt said. “But I am proud of their effort and character. There were just a couple of soft moments, which were disappointing.

“At the end the result could have gone either way and we could have had a bit more fortune in the last five minutes. The plan was to hold on to the ball, put them under pressure and try to earn a penalty.

“We believed we could win, we showed tremendous character and never gave up. But our execution just needed to be a bit better. Things like that last pass just not going to hand.

“And we spoke about discipline and not giving the Bulls the ball in our 22, which is exactly what we did. They are clinical there and they have the best completion rate inside the 22 in the competition,” Everitt said.

The coach said he believes that if he mends a couple of things before next season, the Sharks can go all the way in 2022/23.

“If you look at where we have improved, the set-piece has come on a lot. But our balance on the field has improved too – now we can use our set-piece and we can score tries.

“We put ourselves in position to score tries today and there is no question about the character, culture or team environment because they showed their pride today.

“We just need to fix the rugby side and we especially need to work on the attacking breakdown. We gave the Bulls field position from there, it was a problem against Ulster and in our two previous games against the Bulls,” Everitt said.

By scoring twice in the final quarter to come back from 13-27 down, the Sharks showed their attack is plenty dangerous when it clicks. Phepsi Buthelezi is developing into a top-class ball-in-hand eighthman to provide the link to a backline in which wing Makazole Mapimpi was a threat throughout.

People should not run pell-mell to the conclusion that this is a poorly-coached Sharks team.

“I suppose if you look at Springboks and World Cup winners then we do have a lot of them and they can be proud of their effort. We played some really good rugby.

“I actually enjoyed watching the game even though my blood pressure was probably through the roof. We got the ball through the hands on a couple of occasions and looked really dangerous.

“Under-performance is a broad topic and rugby has a lot of variables. At times we’ve not played as well as we would have liked, and there are certain aspects of our game that need to be worked on.

“Obviously there are things to improve, and they are all fixable. The team has done exceptionally well and they want to play for the jersey,” Everitt said.

Bulls coach Jake White has never been averse to stirring up a bit of controversy and, although he does not have much of a social media presence he knows very well how to stoke up conversation before a big game. And in South African rugby, matches don’t get much bigger than the Currie Cup final, which the Bulls will host against the Sharks on Saturday.

But this week White, who admitted that he still feels the pressure of crunch matches, has been strangely restrained and even went as far as to suggest the Sharks might be favourites because half of their team have won the Currie Cup previously. Knowing how canny Jake is though, this is almost certainly some sort of mind game and he will ensure his Bulls team are the most inhospitable of hosts on Saturday.

That’s the thing about  the 57-year-old White, who has been a top-level coach now for almost 20 years, dating back to when he led the Junior Springboks to the U21 World Cup crown in 2002 – there is always a plan and it usually comes off. From utterly transforming a Springbok team that was in disarray in 2004 into World Cup champions in 2007, winning a rare Tri-Nations title along the way, he then took the Brumbies to the 2013 SuperRugby final and the Sharks to the 2014 semifinals, before leading Montpellier to the European Challenge Cup in 2016.

“I’ve been in enough finals and playoffs to know how it works and you can never take away the pressure. So I still feel the pressure and myself and the players will make mistakes, but a final brings the best out of certain players and they take their opportunities. There’s a real buzz in the squad, it’s so nice to be in the changeroom, you can just feel it.

“This is a very proud and driven team, they have a great hunger to win the Currie Cup and I just need to channel that the right way. I felt what it was like to win in the 2007 World Cup and I would like to taste that again, although it doesn’t get easier. But hopefully I can transfer my experience and the lessons I have learnt to the team. I’ll be trying to keep them calm and they must just enjoy the moment,” White said.

Sharks coach Sean Everitt (51) would have had a lot of interaction with White in 2014 because he was one of the Sharks’ assistant coaches, but the relationship between the head coach, his assistants and the players reportedly became strained leading to the World Cup winner spending just a year in Durban.

White was accused of being dictatorial but he has certainly softened since then, and is well-versed in global modern rugby trends.

Everitt’s coaching stock has certainly grown hugely since then as well, and Brad MacLeod-Henderson, who coached with him at the Sharks, winning the Currie Cup in 2013, described him as being a mentor who placed more responsibility on the players.

“Sean is more collaborative, he won’t pitch up and say ‘this is what we are going to do’. He will help the players make the right decisions, depending on the cues the opposition give them. As a former backline player, he’s more creative and he’s in favour of ball-in-hand rugby and having a go. But he wants the players to have a look first; if it’s on, have a go, if not, go to the air. It’s about space and getting the balance right.

“Sean is a great guy and all the players respond well to him being a good person. They have a lot of respect for him, he’s well-liked by the players and they will go the extra mile for him. He has created a good environment  and that’s why the players want to be in Durban because they’re happy on the field,” MacLeod-Henderson told Saturday Citizen on Friday.