Better from WP, but win against Sharks a must

WHILE Western Province pounded the Eastern Province Kings by 30 points to finally ignite their 2016 Currie Cup campaign, their coach John Dobson knows they still have got plenty of work to do ahead of this weekend’s home fixture against the table-topping Sharks XV.

Province recorded their first victory of the single-round league phase with a 36-6 win over the Kings at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth on Saturday afternoon. But for a long period in the match they struggled to put a gutsy, but rather shoddy home side away.

WP need to beat the Sharks this weekend if they want to keep alive their hopes of making the semi-finals of this competition. They are currently four points off fourth place, and may have to win all their remaining fixtures to make the playoffs.

“Credit to the Kings, they never went away. What they have done in two weeks here, it’s a hell of an impressive performance. Our Super Rugby pack was shaded by the Kings pack, and we were disappointed about our performance,” Dobson said.

WP’s lack of finishing luckily didn’t cost them on Saturday given that they left two tries out there on the field in the second half. But they still scored three tries in each half by getting a bit more width on attack.

Outside centre Huw Jones scored a hat-trick on the day, while Leolin Zas scored a try and created two of Jones’ five-pointers. Sevens star Werner Kok also impressed when he had the ball in his hands, and would have scored a try of his own if it hadn’t been for a forward pass in the first half.

However, the problem is still at No 10, where Brandon Thomson made a few mistakes and didn’t quite dictate matters.

And he had to play practically the whole 80 minutes, after Rob du Preez had had to slot in at inside centre after the impressive Dan du Plessis left the field in the first half with a knee injury.

“It’s the same problem that bedevilled us in the first two weeks. We are losing too much ball,” Dobson said.

“But I thought we had much more width on attack. We had two tries rightfully disallowed, but we seemed to have a bit more shape to our game, which gives me some hope.

“But we are still not controlling the game. Those two flyhalves are young, the (No) 12 got injured, so Rob played centre. In the game-making areas, we are quite young and inexperienced.”

The Kings have been really competitive over the last two weeks, but they just don’t have the fitness or the depth to compete with the likes of WP.

Dobson, though, was frustrated about the stop-start nature of Saturday’s clash.

“I don’t think the Kings were negative, although maybe their style of play isn’t over-ambitious,” Dobson said.

“Every scrum took three minutes or somebody sat down (injured). So the game never had any rhythm. Everything reset to zero the whole game.”