Sharks searching for the right balance
The Sharks are rapidly approaching a watershed in their Super Rugby season, writes Mike Greenaway.
|||Durban - The Sharks are rapidly approaching a watershed in their Super Rugby season and if they want to fall on the right side of the divide between also-rans and play-off participants, they have to get the balance right between attack and defence.
That balance has eluded them, and there was an enlightening remark made by Gary Gold at the end of the press conference following the loss to the Blues last week when he said, in almost throwaway fashion: “Our back three look threatening every time they get the ball, we have to get them involved more often but that is impossible when you are battling to get your hands on the ball.
”That is because the Sharks have a set-piece that is creaking and because they are kicking too much as part of their defensive strategy. Gold hardly needs reminding that the reason the Sharks have tackled more than any other team in the competition is because they keep feeding ammunition to the attackers.
The plan is to get the ball into the right areas of the field, away from danger, and then tackle the opposition into submission or into a turnover that can produce a lethal counter-attack, and most of the Sharks tries this season have come this way.
The Sharks are indeed the second best defenders in the competition, just a percent behind the Crusaders in the statistic “most successful tacklers” but the Crusaders have the balance right between when to kick and when to hold on to the ball. The Sharks do not.
The Crusaders also win their line-outs and scrums as a matter of course, the Sharks do not.Regarding defence and the sub-category of kicking, the Sharks have over-corrected on their glaring weakness of last year where they shipped an embarrassing number of tries (only the Cheetahs were worse).But the competition every year shows that defence can get you only so far. It can win you games but will never make you a winner.
Ask the Stormers. They had the best defence in Super Rugby for three seasons when defence coach Jacques Nienaber ran that department under head coach Allister Coetzee.
The problem is that a significant part of defence is kicking and that sometimes the defence coach incorrectly holds sway over the head coach.
The Sharks play the Chiefs this Friday in Hamilton and they have to discover the balance between Defence Coach Omar Mouneimne’s influence and the ball-in-hand ambitions of Gold.
To give this week’s game against the Chiefs perspective, let’s look at some telling statistics: the Chiefs are the competitions top try-scorers with 39; the Sharks are in 15th place with 14.In terms of “clean breaks”, the Chiefs are second in the standings (behind the Crusaders) with 104.
The Sharks are 16th with a pathetic 53 line breaks.When it comes to “number of times the ball has been carried”, only the last-placed Kings (512) have carried less than the Sharks (580) while the Chiefs are up to 750.
As far as defenders beaten is concerned, the Sharks are in 16th place (114), marginally above the poor Force and inevitably the Kings.Tackle success is the shining light of the Sharks this year – 86.55, with only the Crusader marginally better, 87.4. Interestingly, South African teams in general are Super Rugby’s best tacklers.
The Bulls are in third place on the tackle stats with 85.9 percent and the Stormers, fourth, with 85.6.
The Mercury