Sharks too sharp for Lions
The Sharks won an error-riddled Super 14 game against the Lions on Saturday, running out 25-10 victors in Durban.
Last Updated: 21/02/09 10:18pm
The Sharks won an error-riddled Super 14 game against the Lions on Saturday, running out 25-10 victors at the Absa Stadium in Durban.
It was, in all honesty, not a game for the purist, with both sides struggling to string any meaningful rugby together in the opening quarter.
Any half breaks soon fizzled out, more often than not due to a handling error, and it took an Earl Rose drop-goal to break the deadlock.
That score aside, there was very little to write home about, although Ashwin Willemse almost changed that after 20 minutes. The only problem with his break was he dropped the ball as he beat the last defender, and just like that a try went begging.
As if to show their guests how to finish a move, the Sharks went up the other end and scored the game's first try.
Francois Steyn made the initial burst, and once he was through there was no coming back for the Lions, and the try was eventually scored out wide by big Deon Carstens.
Missed tackles
The main concern for the Lions in the opening half an hour was their missed tackle count, a staggering 21.
Their only saving grace, as far as the score went, was the fact the Sharks' error count was almost as high - hence the lack of advantage gained from so many poor attempted tackles.
Given their inability to score tries it was down to Ruan Pienaar to send over a penalty with six minutes left in the half, one that both teams would rather forget, epitomised by a late penalty miss from Pienaar.
In case we all forgot how bad the first 40 minutes was, the second half started with a Sharks knock-on, and so the tone was set.
Moments later and Willemse took advantage of some suspect defence to jink over, much to his own surprise. With Rose adding the extras the Sharks were behind having made all the running until that point.
Finally, after nearly 53 minutes, there was some rugby of real note - although it came from another mistake by the Lions.
Having coughed up the ball close to the Sharks line the visitors were helpless as Adi Jacobs ate up the yards before sending JP Pietersen over for a fine counter-attacking try.
Kick on
From there the Sharks kicked on, literally, to claim the points - and when all was said and done it was the right result. Kockott added a penalty to his conversion and suddenly there was daylight between the teams - daylight for a game of such a low quality that is.
A rare moment of brilliance, from Ryan Kankowski, saw the game settled. Again it was an attack from their own half, and again they simply had too much pace for the floundering Lions defence.
Sadly the try was marred by a needless incident under the posts - no surprise it was Bismarck du Plessis at the heart of it all.
Try as they may the Sharks could not get the bonus point, and rightly so as, frankly, two fine attacks aside, they were terrible. So too were the Lions, just to a greater extent, which was reflected in their inability to create scoring chances.
