Du Preez takes the blame for defeat

Thus far, the Sharks have only one win from their five games played and that was against the Sunwolves.

They have also lost both of their matches on tour so far after going down 17-24 to the Brumbies in Round Five before being hammered 14-46 by the Rebels in Round Six last weekend.

In Melbourne, the Sharks were outplayed from the start and only managed to score two tries in contrast to Rebels' six.

The defeat saw the Du Preez's men stumbled to 10th on the overall log.

The Sharks coach admitted the defeat was hugely disappointing but offered no excuses for the Durban-based side's below-par outing – instead the coach took full accountability. 

"Hugely disappointing," Du Preez said, adding: "It is something that we should fix as coaches – that is where it should start first and foremost with us as coaches and me personally.  

"To lose in such a way is never nice. Its been tough over the last couple of days for the boys,"

The Sharks' tour does not get any easier as they head to New Zealand next for a match against the Blues, which is followed by a tough encounter against the Hurricanes in Wellington.

And Du Preez said that he has identified the areas where they need to improve if they are to change their misfortunes.

"The positive is that there was definitely effort but our accuracy and execution were sorely missing. It's obviously something that we need to fix going into the game against the Blues.

"Having said that we had some tough discussions around what went wrong and put that game behind us.

"The camp is in good spirit and we know we have a massive task ahead of us. We are positive that we could pull this off and will go all the way to prove that,"  

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