The story of a real fairytale

The satisfaction and the smiles on the faces of the Sharks coaches and some of the players in their little spot in the car park of what is now officially a stadium with no name was something special to behold on Saturday night.

It was certainly a far cry and a marked contrast to the look of stunned disbelief that the same people wore on their visages as they arrived at a Sharks supporters function in Cape Town much earlier in the year.

Back in January I remember writing that the function, held after the Sharks’ first pre-season friendly of the season against the Western Force, was similar to what a Democratic Party get-together must have been like on the night that JFK was shot.

The Sharks were annihilated by the Force that night. More than that, they looked completely unprepared for 2010.

They looked plan-less, they didn’t look like a team, and they looked streets behind the Force, who just a few days earlier had been smashed by the Stormers. So there was plenty of justification for the gloom.

SHOCKED

Coach John Plumtree addressed the Sharks supporters and admitted that he was shocked by what he had just seen.

He vowed to get it right.

I tried to engage the coach and his assistants, all of them people I know well, in conversation. But it was as if their minds were somewhere else. They were that numb.

Hugh Reece-Edwards mumbled something about wanting to take a fast walk up Signal Hill, Grant Bashford wanted to know if I was available for a drink later in the week.

But the drink never happened because whenever enquiries were made, there were meetings. It seemed like there was a mood of crisis management , and it was only January.

And the mood didn’t get any better for them a few days later when they ended their camp in the Cape with a comprehensive defeat to the Stormers.

The Stormers were for my money a better, sharper and more physical side than the WP team that lost the Currie Cup final, but it was still fitting that in a sense the Sharks should end their season against one of the two teams that had taught them an early rugby lesson in the summer months.

As the strands of the Queens song “We are the Champions” sounded out after the final whistle at Absa Stadium this past weekend, it was impossible not to think back to 1990, the year the Sharks (then Natal) first won the Currie Cup.

That song seemed to be playing just about everywhere that season, and at a 20-year reunion function last week, the players and coaches of that era all spoke of the sense of destiny they felt en route to the final.

EARLY-SEASON DOUBTS

The current Sharks would not have felt that until late in the season. In those early days there was considerable doubt over whether Plumtree would even stay the season as coach as it was hardly a secret that the Kiwi had expressed an interest in the Hurricanes job in his native New Zealand.

He didn’t talk much about it to those around him, not to the players or his helpers, and some even asked me if I knew anything.

That was how much in the dark the squad members were over the coach’s plans. Plumtree was uncertain enough about his own intentions to consider taking the Currie Cup season off, which was the initial reason Reece-Edwards got involved.

The start of the Super 14 season didn’t see any lift in the Sharks’ mood.

They lost their first game to the Chiefs to some dubious refereeing decisions, but there was nothing unfortunate about their loss the following week to the Cheetahs. They were beaten by the better team, and the game was at home.

So to the overseas tour - the Crusaders thumped them in their first outing and then they lost to the Waratahs and the Brumbies.

Those two games against the Australian teams were both close, and refereeing certainly played a role in the Waratahs match (remember the Kurtley Beale incident?).

But their Super 14 record read five losses in five starts, and the season synopsis made it even worse, for if you added the two pre-season defeats it was seven losses in seven.

And the Currie Cup semifinal defeat to the Cheetahs that had ended the previous season made it eight losses in succession.

HARD WORDS

What had become evident by then though, was that the Sharks had changed their game, and while rumours of Plumtree’s eminent demise intensified back home, as did the stories of dissension in the camp, the camp had by then already been through the introspection and honest self-appraisal that set the ship right.

By all accounts some hard words were spoken. Being overseas, with no homes to go to in order to get away from teammates, meant there was nowhere to hide.

Everyone had to face up, and full marks to Plumtree and the coaches for being prepared to take some criticism on the chin themselves.

Plumtree’s message to the media was that the confusion had been sorted out and all it would take was one win to turn the losing habit into a winning one. It happened in the next game, with the breaks this time going the Sharks’ way as they beat the Highlanders.

REINVENTED GAME

From there the Sharks steadily regained confidence, and were able to start the Currie Cup season, where the coaches wanted to try out a radically reinvented game, with the confidence of having won seven of their last eight Super 14 games.

By the end of the domestic season captain Stefan Terblanche was joining Plumtree in paying tribute to that team spirit and the feeling of family togetherness played in their Currie Cup triumph.

Indeed, a far far cry from where they were in January and February, and credit must go to both the coaches and the players for pulling together to script a real fairytale.