It was a script even the legendary Aaron Sorkin couldn’t have conjured up, but the Super Rugby match between the Sharks and Crusaders at the Shark Tank over the weekend resembled something out of a movie.
Coming into the match, the Crusaders had been vocal about their desire to cut out the uncharacteristic indiscipline that had been marring their games in the tournament thus far. In fact, their very sloppy match the previous week against the Bulls was proof enough that a drastic change in approach was needed.
All their promises proved to be in vain, though, as the Crusaders found themselves on the wrong side of referee Stuart Berry’s law when he dished out 3 yellow cards in the space of 7 minutes – two of them for dangerous no-arms tackles and one for cynical play against Nemani Nadolo. At that stage of the match the team from Christchurch had already built up a comfortable lead against the Sharks, but with 12 men against 15 suddenly, a big comeback was on the cards for the home team.
That’s what should have happened, but it didn’t.
Instead, the Sharks, who had seemed lacklustre all afternoon, decided to compound their misery by having a moment of madness, themselves. Jean Deysel, who is starting to earn himself an unwanted reputation for collecting foul play penalties against him, decided that the best way to serve his team was to deliberately ram his knee into Matt Todd’s head while the latter was lying at the bottom of a ruck. It was shocking in its stupidity and left Berry and his match officials with little choice but to brandish him with a red card and reduce the home team to 14 men with more than 40 minutes still left to play.
It’s one thing to lose to a better team and make no mistake, the Crusaders were ruthless and clinical in this match; in spite of their diabolical indiscipline, even with 12 men on the field they didn’t concede a point to the Sharks for the next half an hour and carried on picking their opponent apart on attack. With that said the display from the Sharks was nothing short of deplorable and if anything they should be refunding match tickets along with a long, grovelling apology. It’s the very least their fans deserve.
Just two weeks ago, they were embroiled in another torrid affair this time against the Chiefs when they had a yellow card issued to Frans Steyn and a red card for another repeat offender, Bismarck du Plessis, handed down to them. However, unlike on Saturday, the Sharks were able to scrape through and win that match. Both fixtures have cost the team a high price as they have lost both du Plessis and Steyn to lengthy suspensions and Deysel is likely to join them with the severity of his sentence to be known later this week.
Head coach Gary Gold will need to have serious honesty sessions with his squad before their next set of fixtures. For one thing, his senior players are causing strife for the rest of the team on the field by getting sent off and sin-binned, but it’s also the ugliness of the incidents – du Plessis’ kick against his opponent’s face, Steyn’s spear tackle considered to be so dangerous that its cost him 5 weeks on the side-line and now Deysel – that is a terrible advertisement for rugby in general. The Sharks have a talented team who should be contesting Super Rugby finals with greater regularity, and while they have the same amount of points as conference leaders the Bulls, their season could go pear-shaped quickly if they don’t start to address this toxic issue creeping into their matches.
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