Balance important, says UJ boss
FNB UJ’s biggest challenge in the coming week will be to close the gap between brilliance and mediocrity – according to head coach Hugo van As, who watched his side steal a 34-34 draw with FNB Tuks in Pretoria last night.
As they reflect on their thrilling away draw with Tuks, the Men from Johannesburg will now get set to host back-to-back FNB Varsity Cup presented by Steinhoff International champions, FNB Maties, on Monday, February 15.
“Having eight log points after the first two games is just one less that we aimed for, but there is still a lot of hard work ahead,” the UJ mentor told varsitycup.co.za. “The next three weeks could be decisive for us as we play Maties, Pukke [February 22 – away] and UCT [March 1 – at home].”
Maties’ impressive start to the 2010 competition (they have scored 132 points and conceded just 20 in their first two matches) leaves no doubt as to the defending champions’ intentions.
Van As added: “They are a very classy outfit and look set be amongst the top two teams again. That leaves the remaining seven teams to battle in out for the other three semifinal spots.”
But the 2010 Varsity Cup play-offs will be the furthest thing from Van As’s mind this week as he stresses that his charges “will continue in just taking it game by game” – starting with next Monday against Stellenbosch.
“To beat Maties, we will have to improve on our performance against Tuks which was as brilliant as it was mediocre,” he added.
“We definitely made a step up from our performance against TUT in the opening match, but against Maties we will not be afforded the ‘luxury’ of being hot and cold in the same 80 minutes – and get away with it.
“We had Tuks against the ropes on Monday, as they had us, but both sides struggled to keep the initiative long enough to deal the final blow.”
Van As, however, praised his players for the character they showed after soon finding themselves 0-10 on the scoreboard.
“They hit us hard with two good tries in a critical period of the match, but we stood firm and came back admirably. You cannot coach character – you either have it, or not,” he said.
“We have a lot of positives to build on for the Maties match. Other than more consistency I would also like us to show more composure and patience on attack and for this to happen we need to be more clinical in the execution of our gameplan.”
By Morris Gilbert
