Good to see the winners party like they meant it
Well it was good to see the Sharks celebrate on Friday night like the European Challenge Cup really meant something to them because, after the Blue Bulls debacle in the Champions Cup quarter-final at Northampton, the game at large needed evidence that South Africa is serious about playing in Europe.
For me the jury is still very much out – how can a star studded team like the Sharks win just four URC games this season for example – but at least they flew into London early last week intent on salvaging their season.
If European rugby is going to indulge South African teams to the extent of expanding its continental boundaries by 5,000 miles or more to save their bacon, the least they can do is turn up fully booted and suited. The Sharks did that and more at the splendid Tottenham Hotspur Stadium which is one of those soccer cathedrals that transfers beautifully across to rugby when the opportunity arises. Not all of them do.
The Sharks have four World Cup winners in their front five – three of them double World Cup winners – and conducted a timely seminar into the importance of the scrum and scrummaging power at a time when World Rugby, for reasons known only to themselves, are hell bent on destroying it.
When you have a scrum for the ages it offers up another way of winning a game and frankly I’m all for that. Who wants to see endless matches with 14 or 15 tries and basketball scorelines? Occasionally, usually after five pints of London Pride, I can stomach such all singing, all dancing extravaganza and the accompanying unpenalised forward passes. But mostly not. Rugby needs light and shade, yin and yang.
Sorry, back to the Sharks scrum. They were monstrous. I gave up counting after eight penalties conceded by Gloucester even if two of them should actually have gone the other way. And that’s what scrummaging dominance does. Even the referee gets punch drunk and dizzy and sees an offence when none exists. But it affects the game elsewhere. The Sharks kicking game, with fly-half Siya Masuku, right, to the fore, was much more accurate than Gloucester’s and I suspect that’s because the potential rewards were so great. Hoist the high ball and there are a host of outcomes many of which favour the scrummaging superpower. Knock on Glos. Scrum. Knock on Sharks. Scrum. Catch Gloucester but tackled or held up. Scrum. Catch Sharks but held up. Scrum. You get the picture.
That awesome power, strength and technique needs to be rewarded and is priceless in big knock out matches but it also sets a challenge which can be fascinating and entertaining. Flight or fight. Do you try to match it, at least for short periods of the game, or do you play fast and loose and try to impose a different tempo on the game?
In the end Gloucester fell between two stools. If they had played the entire game like they performed in the first ten minutes and the last ten minutes perhaps they could have bettered the Sharks but somewhere along the line they lost confidence and hope.
They should have taken an early lead but referee Mathieu Raynal – maverick and occasionally wrong-headed right to the very end of his considerable career – missed that Eben Etzebeth’s sliding knee challenge on Chris Harris which prevented a try was actually strictly illegal and warranted a penalty try. Had he been over the tryline no problems, but he wasn’t and it’s baffling that none of the officials, so pedantic in other matters, even checked it.
How Glos needed a fast start, but that seemed to take the wind out of their sails and they stopped attacking and disrupting and playing the 1,000mph game that the Sharks pack didn’t really want. The match slowed and tightened dramatically which saw Sharks amass a winning lead with some ease although we should also salute the attacking talents they possess out wide. Again, why is this team only 13th in the URC?
And then right at the end Gloucester in extremis discovered their mojo again with two tries and a disallowed effort. It was all too little, too late which was a shame because briefly we caught a glimpse of the incredible final that might have unfolded.
