Don’t write off the Sharks

Listening to Sharks chief executive Brian van Zyl talking during a lunch in Durban about becoming the first South African team to win the Super 12 should have been enough to have some of the assembled journalists and other guests choking on their langoustines.

Was he being serious? What planet was Van Zyl visiting when the Sharks, wearing their domestic clothing, crashed out of the Currie Cup race before the tournament really even started getting going in 2004?

The Sharks were shocking last year, and they meekly surrendered their right to be called the most consistent team in the Currie Cup since the early 1990s. It was the first time since that year that they had failed to make the semi-finals in a season that such a play-off game was being staged.

Certainly the latter stages of the last Super 12 season, when the Sharks lost most of their home games, and the Currie Cup provided little food for encouragement. There seemed to be a critical lack of depth in key areas, and the Sharks were extremely poor on the day they were crunched by the unheralded Pumas in Witbank.

So poor were the Sharks that many in Durban would have reacted with surprise when it was learned that Kevin Putt was taking charge as coach again in the 2005 season. There is always some fire to go with the smoke, so reports that both Nick Mallett and Dick Muir had been engaged at various stages over the last six months in talks with ABSA Stadium officials are probably not that far-fetched.

But the Sharks have stuck with Putt, at least for the Super 12 season, which means the former scrumhalf will get a chance to salvage his coaching career and apply some of the things that he must have learned since he took over at the Sharks when Rudolf Straeuli was promoted to Springbok coach halfway through 2002.

What chance does he have? Well, I would probably have joined the doom merchants if it were not for two things – a trip to Durban last week to speak to some of the management and players, as well as a memory which extends beyond just a few months.

Engagement of the memory bank led me to recall the mood which greeted me during a similar trip in 2004, just a couple of weeks before the opening Super 12 match against the Bulls at Loftus.

No-one in the media, or indeed among the Sharks supporters, was giving the Sharks any chance of beating the Bulls at Loftus. And the negativity was based on sound rugby sense – the Sharks, who had not been boosted back then by many new arrivals, had been hammered in the 2003 Currie Cup final at the venue just a few months previously.

Yet when I engaged Putt in conversation on an ABSA Stadium outerfield during a Sharks training session, I recall being surprised at how confident and together he seemed. His raving about the team spirit and enthusiasm could be dismissed as typical pre-season hyperbola from a coach who was desperate, but he did seem extremely confident about the Bulls game and the overseas matches that were to follow.

More importantly, he seemed to have done his homework on the Bulls, and the off-the-record part of our conversation suggested he had a plan that he knew would work.

Well, history shows that it did, and the Sharks went on from that famous Loftus victory (their first in a long while) to win some crucial games overseas. Indeed, when they returned home they had scored three wins in five starts, as good an away record as has ever been achieved by a South African team in the competition.

I sense the same vibe coming out of the Sharks camp this time, and those who dismiss last year’s Sharks team as a bunch of failures should perhaps take a few things into consideration.

Firstly, the Currie Cup was played without Butch James and for the most part without Craig Davidson. Both those players have a huge influence on the Sharks game and can be seen as the guys that the rest follow.

Provided he quickly regains the form that he displayed 12 months ago, there is no reason that James should not be the catalyst for a Sharks resurgence, for if you look at the rest of the squad, it does not appear to have been weakened since last season.

So if the Sharks could do it then, why can’t they do it again in 2005? The management are confident their off-season purchases have created the depth that was lacking last year and which created the shortfall which led to the blowout during the home leg.

The local media have labeled many of the newcomers “No-name Brands”, but all of the players who have arrived in Durban have shown promise. Those who don’t make it now may well make it later on.

Make no mistake, the Sharks are in a rebuilding phase. If you want to put money on them winning the Super 12, maybe save it until 2007 or 2008. But as Van Zyl says, rebuilding does not mean you should not look to win at the same time, and that is what the Sharks are aiming to do.

On paper they do not look the most imposing presence on the Super 12 firmament, but unlike last season, they do appear to have as many as 40 players on their books who are capable of playing Super 12 rugby. That means that Putt can manage his resources better this year, and that will hopefully translate into fewer tired legs towards the business end of the competition.

Last season was something of a freak one for the Sharks. Some of the injury problems that beset them, particularly during the Currie Cup, were simply bizarre. How many times did Putt have to change his team on the eve, or even the morning of the match, because of a late injury or illness?

The Sharks are hoping that the greater care that is being taken in player conditioning will mean fewer of those sort of injuries this year, and every effort is being made to ensure the players are ready to peak at those times when it is necessary.

If the Sharks had not run out of gas last year they may well have reached the semifinals. They always tend to travel better than the other South African teams, and some players, such as lock Johan Muller, have now served their apprenticeship and are ready to mature.

Skipper John Smit even reckons Muller may well emerge as the best No5 lock in the country. The off-season gains did not bring huge names to the province, but Dean Hall offers both pace and size out wide, while what was once a weakness at front-row is now looking like the opposite problem.

Certain things need to work for the Sharks – Rudi Keil must stay fit (last year a freak injury put him out before a ball was kicked in anger), Trevor Halstead and James must both avoid the injuries that have cut them down and robbed them of momentum at critical stages of recent seasons, and the aggressive AJ Venter, so vital to the pack, must stay on the right side of the law as the Sharks cannot afford to have him suspended again.

The Stormers and Bulls would be my tips for possible SA Super 12 success, and the Sharks, at best, are dark-horses. But there was enough good to come out of the Sharks in the early parts of last season’s campaign to suggest that if they retain the momentum into the latter part of the competition this time around, Durbanites may have something to crow about in May.