Ken Borland

A wasteful Sharks team suffered their first home defeat of the United Rugby Championship and it was a heavy one as Edinburgh beat them 21-5 at Kings Park in Durban on Saturday evening.

Kings Park was a quagmire and Edinburgh showed top-class skills in the wet to score three tries. The Sharks could only score once, but they had a host of other opportunities which they messed up inside the Edinburgh 22.

The Scottish team only had 35% of territory and 43% of possession, but, having fulfilled their defensive duties in sterling fashion, they would then rise like a phoenix and strike just about every time they were inside the Sharks’ 22.

Sharks wastefulness

The Sharks spent so much time inside the Edinburgh 22 that just scoring one try was nothing short of a disgrace. But more often than not, when they got into the red zone, they would make an unforced error.

Balls were dropped a couple of metres from the line, the rolling maul would be set and advancing but would then give away a penalty, Curwin Bosch failed to kick a couple of penalties to touch and missed all three of his shots at goal, one of them from in front of the poles.

Bosch did kick one excellent touchfinder which put Edinburgh under pressure five metres from their line. The visitors tried a lineout variation but the pressure was released when centre Marius Louw tackled flyhalf Blair Kinghorn in the air and was yellow-carded.

There was no coming back from such profligacy.

Outstanding Edinburgh halfbacks

In treacherous conditions and behind a retreating scrum, halfbacks Ben Vellacott and Kinghorn formed an outstanding partnership. Vellacott’s service was clean and slick, despite the pressure he was under, while Kinghorn would go over for two tries, he kicked out-of-hand well and showed an acute eye for the gap.

Kinghorn’s first try came in the 20^th minute, while Louw was in the sin-bin, as he sliced through midfield after a lovely half-break by outside centre Mark Bennett.

The Scotland flyhalf’s second try sealed victory with 11 minutes to go as he was first to a loose ball on the ground and twice kicked through before dotting down.

Boffelli defused Sharks’ kicking game

Given the conditions, the Sharks were always going to kick long and often, but Edinburgh fullback Emiliano Boffelli was far from chasing shadows at the back. The Argentine star was superbly solid under the high ball and his positional play was excellent. The Sharks found it hard to find grass inside the Edinburgh 22.

Boffelli also evaded three tacklers to score a try in the 56^th minute, following a storming run by eighthman Ben Muncaster, who also profited from missed tackles.

Scrum success only area of joy for Sharks

The starting front row of Thomas du Toit, Ox Nche and Bongi Mbonambi dominated the scrums but the Sharks were not able to build on that platform. The elation was shortlived as, more often than not, in an instant the advantage had been frittered away.

Scorers

Sharks – Try: Thomas du Toit.

Edinburgh – Tries: Blair Kinghorn (2), Emiliano Boffelli. Conversions: Boffelli (3).

 

Bulls coach John Mitchell’s comments this week about how he is going to set about changing the entire model of how the franchise recruits and develops players reinforces the belief that South African rugby as a whole needs to take ownership of the fact that we are extremely wasteful when it comes to our talent.

The fact that we have so much rugby talent in this country is both a blessing and a curse. The downside of being so well-endowed with athletes is that very little attention is paid to putting systems in place that will get the best out of young players.

One gets the feeling that the current approach of our franchises’ recruitment officers is to just try and buy up as much talent as possible at Craven Week, let nature run its course and hope one or two of them turn into stars.

Contrast this with a country like Australia where rugby union has a small portion of the talent ‘pie’ and whatever players they have, they have to fully invest in them and maximise their potential. Jake White used to joke that if prop Bill Young, who played 46 times for Australia, had to pitch up at Stellenbosch University they would have sent him to the third XV straight away. But the point was that Young was ‘made’ into a solid Test front-ranker, whereas in South Africa he probably would have just disappeared.

By focusing on quantity and not quality, and by just worrying about who is going to play in the provincial U19 and U21 sides rather than developing the actual skills of the players, South Africa have come to the point where their SuperRugby squads are made up of many players who are not good enough to play in the competition, according to Mitchell, a former All Blacks coach.

Rugby in this country needs to stop being so insular and needs to be open to world trends, including those in other sports.

Even I, who usually uses watching football as a sleeping pill, have been impressed by many aspects of the Soccer World Cup and have been thinking how these could translate into the world of rugby union.

By staging a brilliant counter-attack to beat Japan at the death, Belgium produced a magnificent passage of play that was reminiscent of some of the superb tries scored by the All Blacks in recent years.

Any sports lover would have been impressed by Romelu Lukaku’s brilliant running off the ball and his dummy that set up Belgium’s winner; the lesson for rugby players was that often you can have more impact through what you do without the ball than with it.

And the image of football fans as being hooligans has been challenged by the splendid Japanese and Senegalese fans, who embody all that is good about sport, and they even cleaned up afterwards!

I have also been watching hockey this week and their new interpretations surrounding the use of the aerial ball or overhead might provide some help to rugby lawmakers currently grappling with the ball-in-the-air issues that are bedevilling their game.

Hockey have simplified the whole issue by basically saying whoever is under the ball has all the rights and cannot be played until they have the ball under control. Perhaps if the defender under the ball in rugby had similar protection it would limit kicks to being into space only and would eliminate all the aerial contests that are proving so difficult to control.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-kzn/20180707/282282436055423