Sharks are dead in the water
Sharks coach John Plumtree admitted that his team's play-off hopes are 'dead' after their demoralising loss to the Reds in Brisbane.
The Durban side are yet to win a match on their overseas tour and after five consecutive losses Plumtree does not hold much hope of them staging a late season revival.
"I think we're dead now. It's just been a terrible season for us," he told Sportal.
The Sharks conceded four tries in the first half at Suncorp Stadium, and despite a second half fight back could not do enough to secure the bonus point.
Plumtree was left to rue the way his team consistently coughed up possession in the first half, handing the Reds a number of valuable scoring opportunities which they duly grabbed.
"You can't give a side like the Reds that type of possession from unstructured defence," Plumtree said.
"They were just deadly from turnover ball.
"I thought the more of that they got, the more confident they got, and we couldn't help ourselves, we just kept on giving it to them.
"So it was a terrible performance in that first half," he added.
Plumtree said that certain individuals had let the team down significantly by slipping off tackles and allowing the Reds to run rampant.
"There's some individuals there that just let themselves down big time," he said.
"This week we talked about how important our defence would be but there's one or two players out there that are just out of form," he said.
With his injury-hit team floundering in tenth place on the standings Plumtree said that their only option is to try and make the best of a tough situation.
"There's some things that we can change, but there's some things we can't change because of the situation we've got with injuries, so we just have to keep boxing on," he said.
