Everitt praises Sharks after win
IT is testimony to the spirit in the Sharks team that they successfully combated heavy jet lag to beat the Jaguares in Durban, but as the game hit the three-quarter mark, the players noticeably flagged.
And by the end of the game they were out on their feet, which was hardly a surprise.
“There was definitely no lack of effort going in from the players – they simply ran out of legs,” coach Sean Everitt said after his team had beaten the South Americans 33-19. “It was fatigue that caught up with us in those last 20 minutes.
“I have had experience (when an assistant coach to Jake White) of playing the Hurricanes once before in a similar situation (when we’d just come back from tour). We won that game too but the guys had to dig deep at the end, and we had to do that here too,” Everitt recalled. “Until you experience that trip back from Australia you have no idea of how much it takes out of you.
“It is not a direct flight back from Australia. You have to fly from Brisbane to Sydney first, and you have to wake up at 3am on the day of departure. I am incredibly proud of the guys. I said to them in the change room after the game that this time last week we were in Brisbane; and we were in Joburg on Monday night because we missed our connecting flight. To put in a performance like that, with that sort of energy and enthusiasm, was just incredible.”
The Sharks this week turn their attention to the Stormers and they will do so confident that they can match the Capetonians in the setpieces when a month ago this would not have been the case.
The Sharks have notably upped their game in the scrums and lineouts over the last fortnight.
“The progression of our set-piece play has been really pleasing,” said Everitt. “We were getting criticised for not being up to it from a setpiece viewpoint. We know as coaches that the set-piece is always a big part of performance and if you don’t have that you can’t expect to keep winning. So we’ve been putting in a lot of hard work and it has been pleasing to see the guys getting it together. As you would have seen in this game, there has been a massive improvement.
“We scored a maul try and we did very well in stopping their maul. We had to do it many, many times, as from 50 percent of their lineouts they drove and they mauled. That takes a lot out of you from a fatigue perspective. We need to keep building on that as we know there is another big challenge waiting for us in the form of the Stormers.”
The Stormers pack remains a powerful unit, despite the loss to injury of Pieter-Steph du Toit, Bongi Mbonambi and Siya Kolisi, but the Sharks will not fear them and will be confident they can supply their deadly backline with sufficient possession to win the game.
As improved as the set-pieces were, the most outstanding feature of the Sharks win was the accuracy of their kicking game, with halfbacks Louis Schreuder and Curwin Bosch pin-point in their aerial hoists and chasing wingers Sbu Nkosi, Madosh Tambwe (when deputising while Nkosi had a head impact assessment) and Makazole Mapimpi were exceptional in their chasing and contesting in the air.