'A massive wake-up call': Sharks boss demands a response
SPOTLIGHT: Sharks head coach John Plumtree believes his players were not in the right frame of mind to deal with the challenges that were thrown at them by the Lions on Saturday.
The Lions outscored the team from Durban by six tries to two on their way to a convincing 38-14 victory in a United Rugby Championship showdown at Ellis Park.
It was one-way traffic for most of the game with the Sharks scoring their five-pointers in the final few minutes of the match.
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“It wasn’t what we expected. We expect better from each other,” Plumtree told reporters after the match.
“We’ve let ourselves down and our fans will be disappointed. We didn’t expect that to happen.
“We had a really good week physically [in training], but we didn’t nail it mentally.
“You are not going to beat a side like the Lions if you are not in the right space mentally.”
Plumtree added: “All credit to the Lions. We knew it would be tough and they wanted it more and they showed that.
“They won most of the collisions and just worked harder around the park.
“When you are playing against a side like that and if we are not in the same space, you are going to come off second best and badly and that’s pretty much what happened.”
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The Sharks will face the Lions again next weekend in a rescheduled Round One fixture and Plumtree said it will take a bit of time to digest the Ellis Park defeat.
The South African Shield will also be on the line with Sharks currently four points behind the Stormers.
“We will just grieve this loss. It hurts and we will have a good look at it and then we will build towards next week,” the coach explained.
“We will be expecting a response from everyone.
“Our last three games have been away from home, so we’ve got a home game next week and we look forward to playing in front of our fans again.
“We won’t talk too much about next week until we have a chat about what happened here today [Saturday].”
He added: “We’re just going to look inward at everybody – all the players, management. We’ve got to make sure that we learn from this and that it never happens again. We still have high hopes of doing well and that is a massive wake-up call for us.
“A week is a long time in rugby and this time next week we can’t be feeling like this, so it could be a timely wake-up call.
“The team showed a lot of resilience against the Bulls [in a 29-19 win in Pretoria on February 15], but that is gone and we have got to be able to move past it and make sure that we are constant every week.”
