VIDEO: John Plumtree - 'You can't buy a rugby team'
SPOTLIGHT: Sharks head coach John Plumtree admits things will become tricky over the next couple of months when his Bok players go into a compulsory rest period.
The Durban-based side ended the calendar year with a 15-16 defeat to the Stormers in a United Rugby Championship Round Nine clash in Cape Town on Saturday.
It was their seventh defeat of the campaign, which has made their goal of reaching the play-offs a lot harder.
With South Africa’s World Cup winners set to step away from the game between February and March, Plumtree knows that life is going to get a whole lot harder.
The story continues below…
“We’ve got some Springboks and we’ve got some good ones, but we can’t rely on them,” said Plumtree.
“What we have to do is have a squad that is really strong, so when the Boks come back, they make our team stronger and they don’t have to rescue our team.
“You can’t buy a rugby team. It has never been done before.
“You can’t buy success. You need to develop it and recruit and retain and do smart things and then you get the Etzebeths and the Vincent Kochs.
“Then you become stronger and stronger and that is what we have to do.
“You don’t go buy six or seven players and then all of a sudden you think you are going to be strong.
“It doesn’t happen like that.”
Plumtree added: “They [Boks] all won’t go off together. We will have some and some will be resting.
“The ones that rested will come back and then others will have their turn.
“We will do it smartly.
“We are not strong enough to compete without the strength of those Springboks.”
Scrum problems
Meanwhile, Plumtree admitted that his side’s scrum performance was a big area of concern in the defeat to the Stormers.
“I was disappointed to concede the scrum penalties. We will have to look at it.
“There were one or two at the end there I thought was 50/50.
“The last one of the game, where the penalty came from an AR [assistant referee] decision, it looked to me like their loosehead’s elbow was on the ground before our tighthead hit the ground.
“It was a tough call because if that call goes the other way, we get a penalty and we go into the corner and we then build pressure with two or three minutes to go.
“That is the frustration of being in that position with only one point up or one point down.”
Young locks
The Sharks were without Eben Etzebeth’s services due to an illness. However, Plumtree was happy with what he saw from Emile van Heerden and Corne Rahl.
“Eben was struggling with a stomach complaint since Tuesday.
“We brought him down here because he was getting better, but he wasn’t good enough on the day of the game.
“We trained with the other young locks that we got and it was nice having Gerbrandt Grobler coming back from injury [off the bcnch].
“I thought he played very well
“It was good to have his experience in there.
“Of course, we missed a world-class player there. He [Etzebeth] was looking forward to playing and he told me before the game he hadn’t played them yet.
“He will have to wait for that opportunity.
“I thought those young locks played really well.
@rugby365com
