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Sharks circle wounded Lions

Friday 25th July 2008

Low fives: The Lions look undercooked for their Currie Cup clash against the Sharks

The Sharks await a limping Lions outfit for Saturday's Currie Cup clash in Durban, where injuries have had a major disruption to the visitors match preparations.

They have lost World Cup-winning centre Jaque Fourie after early indications were that he would be playing and Earl Rose has been shifted from full-back to fly-half to accommodate the loss of Louis Strydom.

However, captain Cobus Grobbelaar, doubtful earlier in the week, has been passed fit and will lead the side out at the 'Shark Tank'.

"The Lions have a lot of exciting players amongst their backs and they have their Super 14 forward pack so we have a lot of respect for them, obviously," admits coach John Plumtree.

"They will play a lot better against us than they have in the past couple of weeks, so it's going to be a pretty tough contest."

Despite the loss to the Cheetahs last week in Bloemfontein, the Sharks coach believes there is no reason to feel despondent.

"We played quite a bit of rugby against them," he said.

"Looking at and reviewing the video of the game, we just let ourselves down and gave them a few opportunities. They also targeted a couple of areas where they felt they could get some gains."

He feels that the Sharks were well in the game but it all turned around in a brief period.

"We were defending and playing quite well and 17-9 down with 13 minutes to go, we were actually playing all the rugby, but all of a sudden there was a naïve defensive mistake which allowed them to break our backs with that third try and then the fourth was just a bounce and the game was over."

The scoreline might be all that is recorded out of the match, but were it not for a couple of simple mistakes or an unlucky bounce of the ball, things might have looked a lot different.

"I'm not so sure the score reflected the state of the game," said Plumtree.

"We were disappointed with our line-outs and a couple of things that led to that scoreline, but we are actually playing quite a bit of rugby, although we lack that penetration.

"Where Sharks in the past have looked good has been in their ability to break from all areas of the field, whether it is in the middle or out wide and with this group we are limited in some of those areas that we can line-break."

With the welcome return of the Springboks and players from injury, the Sharks are certainly not lacking in the penetration and line-breaking arena.