RUGBY NEWS - The Sharks may feel they have drawn the short straw by having to face the one team that has beaten them at home this season in Saturday’s Currie Cup final, but if they take a glass half-full approach, there is some justification for confidence.
Although the Sharks lost quite comprehensively to Western Province in the game that ended the league phase of the season, and it will rightly be the last 50 minutes of the match, where WP were well on top, that most people will remember, the first half hour of that clash was very different.
Indeed, WP coach John Dobson had occasion in the build-up to last week’s semifinal against the Golden Lions at Newlands to admit that one more score from the Sharks during their dominant opening to the last Kings Park clash between the sides would have killed off the WP challenge. And the Sharks came pretty close to it.
What happened in that game was that a WP team that had much more to play for than a Sharks side that had already qualified as the top place log finisher just grew in confidence and determination the longer they stayed in the contest. The Sharks, with nothing to play for, went through the opposite experience and their energy slumped.
Both protagonists in the domestic season decider have similar traits in that they have at times struggled to deliver the knock-out blow. The Sharks didn’t manage it in Durban two weeks ago, and WP have faltered several times this season because they weren’t ruthless enough. WP arguably even made heavy weather of putting the Lions away at Newlands last Saturday.
The need to be more clinical in the attack zones has been a constant refrain from Sharks coach Robert du Preez both during the Currie Cup and Super Rugby and his WP counter-part has spoken of the need to step up the attack inside the opposition 22 in the final.
For the Sharks, the key to their build-up for Saturday might be to work on what let them down later in the game last time out against Province while also always keeping in mind what worked in the first half hour.
“We can’t forget what happened in the pool game here against WP,” said Sharks backline coach Sean Everett as his team began preparations for the first Durban final since 2012.
