The battle of the broken teams
CRUNCH: SHARKS, JAGUARES EAGER TO FINISH STRONG
Ken Borland
Sharks fullback Curwin Bosch says it will be two teams in a black mood clashing at Kings Park on Saturday when the KwaZulu-Natalians take on the Jaguares in a decisive Super Rugby match.
Despite their loss to the Bulls last weekend, the Argentinians are still challenging for top spot in the South African Conference, depending on the Lions’ result against their Pretoria neighbours, while the Sharks spurned a golden chance to climb into the top eight by losing to the Stormers, and now have to beat the Jaguares and hope the Highlanders beat the Rebels and deny them a bonus point.
“The Jaguares will be hurting because they are coming off a loss and so are we. We should have won our game last weekend and I think the Jaguares believe the same thing. We know how important this game is, it’s definitely a final and if we don’t go through with our plans we’re done. Hopefully we can pull through.
“If we had stuck to our gameplan against the Stormers then they could not live with us, but we didn’t execute our plans. It was one simple thing, we created many opportunities to put away, but we just didn’t execute. The final pass didn’t go to hand or we kicked through when we weren’t supposed to,” Bosch said.
He was a participant in the Springboks’ June internationals and is certainly looking more settled at fullback, having a key role in the Sharks’ game-plan.
“I learnt a lot about playing fullback with the Springboks and I’m understanding more about the space and time on the ball I have back there. It was also a chance to work on my running game. Test rugby is a different level though and hopefully I will get an extended run later in the year and I can learn some more.
“We just need to fix the basics at the Sharks, the things that are in our control. We mustn’t try to force things, like a 50/50 offload or trying to hang on to the ball for one more phase. Our strength is our offloading game, but that comes later when you’ve made the opposition tackle a lot and you’ve tired them out,” Bosch said.