Sharks coach John Plumtree says his side suffered because of the referee, but in the end, they just weren’t good enough.

In the sober light of Sunday morning, there is a very good reason that the Sharks were never going to win this one.

You can say that records are there to be broken, but scientific evidence comes into play when you consider that in 16 years of Super Rugby in matches between New Zealand and South African sides, there is only one case of a team winning a long-haul, away semifinal – or in this case, a quarterfinal.

This is not a defence of the Sharks’ often error-strewn performance in Nelson on Saturday, just a mitigation of circumstances. The travel thing is complicated.

Fatigue, crushing cold and a wet field made it another world compared to Loftus Versfeld a week before, and the performance reflected it.

The Crusaders in the first half were thrown off their game by the committed Sharks and their strategy of cutting off X-Men Dan Carter and Sonny Bill Williams, but instead of capitalising on this, the Sharks knocked-on, miscued kicks, went offside at the breakdown, threw forward passes … and the grateful Crusaders were not required to do much playing and just waited for the Sharks to err.

Thus a tenuous 13-5 lead at the break inevitably gave way to the Crusaders outscoring the Sharks 23-3 in the second half as they found their rhythm and the tiring Sharks made even more mistakes as they chased the game.

It hardly helped the Sharks that this article could have been sarcastically headlined “Bryce blows a beauty”.

When Mr Lawrence was appointed for this game, the Sharks’ collective cursing would have embarrassed a sailor. They have suffered so many times at his officious, jumped-up exhibitions to have been justified in asking Sanzar for a neutral referee.

One decision in particular – blowing the Beast for “behaving dangerously” BEFORE the ball had been put into the set scrum will live on forever in refereeing notoriety.

The Sharks did not lose because of Lawrence, but he nevertheless deserves a lambasting and not the reward of refereeing the final, can you believe it.

Coach John Plumtree could not hide his disappointment when he commented from Nelson on Saturday: “We wanted to do a lot better than that … but we were beaten by a better side on the night. But I was proud of my boys. We weren’t accurate enough when we had the ball, we missed tackles at crucial times and they handled the conditions better than us.”

“In general it was a pretty big week for us with the travel and change in climate, obviously, but we’re not making excuses. You can’t do that; we were beaten by a champion team and have to accept that.

“It’s been a tough campaign for us, but I’m proud that we made the top six,” Plumtree continued. “We had to work really hard to get there, but in the end we were not good enough to advance.”

The Sharks were still in the game at half-time, despite conceding 10 points in the last 10 minutes of the half.

Willem Alberts had scored from a fine Charl Mcleod break-out from a lineout near the halfway line, with Keegan Daniel doing the support running.

There had been a penalty by Carter after just 30 seconds and it took them half an hour to score again, when Williams benefited from the Sharks’ set scrum being turned over on their own 22, and Carter kicking another penalty in the 38th minute.

“That soft try really hurt us,” Plumtree admitted (his team otherwise scrummed very well, particularly compared to the shunting they got from the same pack at Twickenham). And then came a sting of a couple of penalties…

“It was a case of playing catch-up rugby after we conceded that intercept try in the second half (Kieran Read picking out a long pass from Patrick Lambie to Meyer Bosman) which took it to 20-8. From then on we had to play in our own half more and that proved our undoing.”

“The Crusaders are a great side, full of talent, full of current All Blacks. They’ll be tough to beat in the semi-final. The Stormers will have to play well to beat them,” he warned.

Article by Mike Greenway