Fumbling your ace
It is one of those things you hate to hear when you finish on the winning side – ‘you didn’t win it; we lost it’ – but that is exactly what the Sharks must be muttering amongst themselves this week.
But that is no matter for the Bulls, who, never short of self-confidence, are flying with the clouds this week.
After watching the first 20 minutes of Saturday’s final, as someone who is not a fan of the Bulls’ style of rugby, I felt as though my opinion was set to be triumphantly vindicated by a Sharks side who had the measure of the Bulls’ physical onslaught. But they fumbled the trump card.
My thinking ahead of the final was (and remains) that if a side is able to simply compete with the Bulls’ in the physical exchanges, you’ll sink them out wide.
After 20 minutes on Saturday, it looked to all intents and purposes that the Sharks were well on their way to accomplishing just that.
But two errors which have been rampant in their successful campaign came back to haunt them – and added to this was just some genuine misfortune.
Time and time again the Sharks should have stretched their legs out wide and simply expressed their attacking talent to its full extent and allowed the likes of Barritt and Murray and Pietersen to have a bash.
In last year’s clash between the two, the Bulls crushed the Sharks in the first half, but then the Sharks fought their way back with four tries when the likes of Barritt were simply given reign to have a go.
Instead the attack was ponderous and then strangely impatient at times, and it costs you to be uncreative and static in a final. The Sharks have won trophies in the past by means of the flair of Joubert, Tony Watson, Honiball and the like. They had an opportunity to unleash attack but they didn’t.
The second mistake was this.
Selecting Francois Steyn.
On selecting a shadow Springbok squad a couple of months ago I was lambasted for excluding Steyn. Yet I remain completely mystified as to why all the hype that surrounds this player.
Every now and then he breaks a tackle, and every now and then he lands a drop goal, but often he concedes mistakes which far outweigh those good things he sometimes does.
He is young, you say, give him time. Tell that story somewhere else rather, if you don’t mind, because that is just a bizarre form of politicking that has nothing to do with representative sport. There are other places to learn a trade than at the highest level. If you are to play somebody that young, then at least select a player who looks like he may just be enjoying that special opportunity given him.
He was rounded by Pedrie Wannenburg, fluffed all his famous drop goals, and marched forward to volunteer to kick a match-winning goal that he was seemingly ill-prepared to take. And then came that missed touch. My advice to Steyn is to do a bit of soul-searching as to why he started playing rugby in the first place. He needs to recapture that initial enjoyment at just trying your best in heated competition.
But it was not only self-imposed factors that obliterated the Sharks’ bid for glory.
The Bulls’ began the match playing a physical game that was actually beyond the legal limits of the game.
Habana should have been binned if not given marching orders for a tackle that was horribly reckless and could have caused serious damage to Percy Montgomery. Sometimes we can see a player is playing with intent to be dangerous, but in other times you simply have to call on what were the results of a player’s actions, regardless as to what his intent may have been.
Bakkies Botha, for the umpteenth time, played like a madman, and his heckles every time he succeeds in playing the man and not the ball disgusts me as a rugby fan if I am honest with you. It may often be within the laws, but I wouldn’t be proud of myself if I were him. I am not commenting on the man, but simply what I see on the field.
And the abiding question for all Sharks fans is how the Bulls won that final turnover under a mass of bodies which saw them take it wide, bring it back, and send Habana over for the matchwinner.
But that said, let us not forget to laud the Bulls for achieving success in a manner that many thought impossible. They stuck to their strengths no matter what the rest of us thought of those strengths, and they won the highest prize in a comeback when most thought all had been lost. Nobody can discredit their resilience right to the end.
But they didn’t win it; the Sharks lost it.
