'We have a few big problems'
REACTION: The Sharks will head into the second half of their European campaign desperate to turn around an abortive season, but acknowledging there are challenges.
Languishing in last place in the United Rugby Championship, the Durban-based franchise hosts French club Oyonnax at Kings Park this coming Saturday and will then travel to Rodney Parade in Newport the following week to face the Dragons.
The back-to-back Challenge Cup fixtures present coach John Plumtree with an ideal opportunity to find some answers.
Plumtree was at a loss to explain his team’s poor run of form – with just two wins in 11 games this season in the URC and Challenge Cup.
After a promising start in the Challenge Cup, a 45-5 rout of French outfit Section Paloise, the Sharks lost their way again and produced what the coach felt was an “average” display in losing (29-32) to the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein.
However, the bonus-point win over Pau, to go with the two points against the Cheetahs, still has them handily placed in Pool One – second behind the Cheetahs.
“I don’t know, something is going on with the group that we have to work out,” the coach told @rugby365com when asked about the hardscrabble season.
“We feel good and we had a good week of preparation,” he said, adding: “But under pressure, we just don’t respond well.
“Our decision-making under pressure was terrible against the Lions [at the weekend],” he said of a game they lost 18-20, after leading 18-3 at half-time.
“It has to go down to the leaders.
“I don’t know what is going to excite the boys.
“It is going to be quite hard to pick ourselves up from the canvas after this loss.”
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Plumtree reiterated his earlier statement that he is in for the long haul and is determined to turn the franchises around, despite their poor run of form.
“It is not because we are not working hard enough,” he said.
“We will keep fighting.
“I know there will be many people running us down, but we will stick tight as a group.”
A bitterly disappointed Sharks coach, Plumtree, felt his team ‘should have’ won the past weekend’s encounter with the Lions.
Plumtree knows the ‘soft moments’ in the games are what is costing his team – as it was at the weekend, with a 15-point (18-3) half-time lead evaporating and becoming a loss (18-20).
“I am getting sick of making losing speeches,” the veteran coach said.
Plumtree admitted they have a few ‘big’ problems in the Shark Tank that need to be resolved ahead of the two Challenge Cup outings.
“Every coach feels the pressure when you go through a patch like this,” he said of a URC run that has seen them get just one win in nine starts and rooted at the bottom of the table.
“Like always, I look at myself first and what I could have done better,” Plumtree said, adding: “We are working real hard and trying our best.
“We know where we are going with it, what the plan is and what we are trying to achieve.
“It would be great to get some reward for our efforts.”
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* Picture credit: @URCOfficial
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