A draw represents differing emotions for opposing teams, but for the Cell C Sharks, the Vodacom United Rugby Championship result against the DHL Stormers at Hollywoodbets Kings Park on Saturday was akin to a loss.
Having built up a strong lead, with a dominant scrum at the forefront of the pressure that got the Durban side on the front foot, only for the Stormers to fight back and secure a draw that to them would have seemed like a win given how they had been bested at scrum-time in particular.
In his summation of the game afterwards, Cell C Sharks head coach Sean Everitt explained “The plan we put together and the pressure we put on their set-piece was everything we planned for throughout the week and we did everything right for probably 71 minutes and then threw it away at the end.
“We’ve learned lessons in this competition that the small mistakes you make have consequences and I’m not talking about the big ones, especially discipline. Unfortunately, we didn’t execute our kicking game well enough, talking about kicking to poles and sometimes that happens.
“It was just a bad day at the office for Boeta, he received the man of the match award against the Ospreys for his kicking, so you don’t become bad overnight. He sets his standards high, we know he can kick, we saw with that beautiful drop-goal, and there were two off the upright – one from him and one from Tito – so we were probably a bit unlucky.
“But there were other opportunities to win the game and unfortunately discipline at the end of the day cost us.”
At 19-3 up, the game was there to win. But things went wrong and the Stormers somehow conspired to pilfer a draw from a position where they looked dead and buried.
“It comes down to discipline,” said Everitt. “You don’t want to give away penalties and put yourself under the pump, so I think we beat ourselves in this game. We didn’t lose the game, we had an opportunity to win it and get four points, even five if we had taken more opportunities.
“At 22-15 up, it was a crucial stage of the game where we lost our lineout which led to Sbu Nkosi’s yellow card. If you asked me where we could have closed the game out, it would have been at that lineout, but unfortunately, we saw what happened there.”
Scrumming was an area the coach admitted was always going to be an area of focus, somewhere the Stormers have been successful and therefore a focal point to try to dominate the Cell C Sharks. Six scrum penalties certainly had the Stormers pack in serious trouble.
“The Stormers won four scrum penalties against the Bulls the previous weekend, so we never took anything for granted even though we had Thomas du Toit, Bongi Mbonambi and Ox Nche in the front row.
“We have cohesion there because when they’re not with us, they’re scrumming for the Boks and we’re very fortunate to have all three.
“Someone like Thomas has been a stand-out for us throughout the URC, we’re very pleased with where we are with him, he’s learned a lot in the last couple of years and he’s just been outstanding for us. We’re happy with him and his form.
“Ox has come a long way in his development and he and Bongi were dominant in every game they played at the end of the year.”
Looking at where there could be improvements in executions, Everitt explained that the work-ons do not require a whole new plan of action, but rather minor mental adjustments to what they are doing already.
“There were opportunities we left out there from a try-scoring point of view and we could have finished off a few a bit better by being patient with the ball in hand. So we probably went a little off-plan there.
“The guys are disappointed after this result, it’s not the one we wanted, especially after dominating for a large period of the game. We’ll bounce back, this team has a lot of fight and there is a really good vibe in this team.”