Sharks stumped after loss to Blues

GIVEN last year’s woes, Sharks director of rugby Gary Gold is accustomed to unmitigated disasters and worst case scenarios.

Their 2016 campaign reached those levels yet.

However, with three consecutive losses, it is time for Gold to take stock of what has gone wrong in those defeats.

Saturday’s 23-18 loss to the Blues at Eden Park has to be the most galling of the season so far.

While Tana Umaga’s side has improved incrementally this year, they are still comfortably the weakest of the New Zealand franchises.

Gold had difficulty explaining how his team relinquished their 10match unbeaten streak that lasted for exactly 11 years.

“It was incredibly frustrating to watch, especially on the basis of how has not well we did in the second half. I thought we defended well against a team that attacked us for large stretches of the game.

“However, we don’t want to tackle for the whole game and when we have the ball, we also want to ask questions,” Gold said.

“Paul Jordaan’s try was an excellent one when you saw how we were able to build enough pressure.

“The opportunities are going to be there but it was a case of poor discipline at the end. When we did build pressure, we tended to lose our heads in the set-piece, with the lineout being the example.”

There is nothing wrong with basing your game plan on a solid defensive platform. Despite its early success and its recent failures, Gold thinks it’s the right approach but acknowledged the impact it has on their high error rate.

The statistics illustrate how passive the Sharks were when going forward even though they put in a marvellous defensive shift.

The Blues ran 608 metres from their 159 carries as compared to the Sharks’ 293 from their 69 carries.

While most of that running was neutered and limited to just two tries, it came at the cost of 195 tackles.

The Sharks have tough assignments against the Highlanders and the Chiefs. They will ask even more questions of the Sharks’ defensive resolve.

When they return from New Zealand early next month, they have a date with the Hurricanes at King’s Park before they hop across the Atlantic Ocean to face the Jaguares the following week.

“When you defend for long periods of time, you tend to make errors but as the tour lengthens, we’ll have to be hard on ourselves to ensure that mistakes don’t happen,” Gold said.

“I still think it was a great effort from the team because the Blues played well and so did we.

“What was disappointing was that we made the errors that cost us the game, and that’s frustrating,” Gold said.