3 Consecutive wins and Top spot on the Vodacom Super Rugby South African Conference table should have left Cell C Sharks director of rugby Gary Gold beaming from ear to ear on Saturday night, but he wasn’t.

While he has been justifiably well satisfied with the character shown by his team in scoring an away win under huge pressure against the Toyota Cheetahs in Bloemfontein, in edging out the Chiefs when at a disadvantage in numbers because of red cards, and in coming from behind against the Western Force, Gold argues that his team is making life more difficult for itself than it needs to be.

The Sharks won 15 / 9 against the Western Force at Growthpoint Kings Park this past weekend, but it was a close run thing and his team had to make use of several get out of jail cards in order to prevail in a game they should have been expected to win comfortably.

“We are making a habit of winning close games and some might see that as a positive in that it means we are creating a winning habit after being in a bit of a hole a few weeks ago, but the bottom line for me is that it should not have been so close and I am not happy about that,” said Gold.

“With respect to the Force, who did play well, we should have been able to wrap up that game comfortably. Instead, it was them who looked back on the game as one of missed opportunities and one they could easily have won. We had opportunities in the first half, and did not take them. We made it hard for ourselves and we didn’t play well.

“It is good that we have won 3 in a row. It is good to be at the Top of the conference, although we have a heck of a long way to go this season and the Stormers have a game in hand on us. I reckon the deciding game in the battle for conference honours might well be our last one here against the Stormers. But for me what is worrying is that we are just not playing as well as we should be. I know what this team is capable of, and we are well below that capability at the moment.”

Gold knows his team is going to have to shape up quickly, for the Crusaders visit Durban on Easter Saturday, and the Sharks are going to have to lift their intensity several notches if they are not going to be propelled back to square one by a defeat that would be a big setback if you consider that they travel to Johannesburg to play the in-form Lions the following week.

“The Crusaders lost to the Bulls and that will make them more dangerous. They are always a difficult team to play against, as their record shows. However, we saw how the Bulls improved from their own performance against the Western Force to the one against the Crusaders, and maybe we can do the same. The Bulls were a different team against the Crusaders compared to the one that played the Force.”

The Sharks will quite literally be a different team when they play the Crusaders, for Gold will be pleased to welcome back his first-choice halfback pairing of Cobus Reinach and Patrick Lambie for the match, with Lambie set to take the captaincy reins.

“I don’t want to make excuses, but it did make it hard for us to have so many new combinations out there, and that could explain why we were disjointed,” he said.

Marcell Coetzee will also return but Gold should have been pleased with the hard working contribution made by Renaldo Bothma. Jean Deysel also led the team well and was good at blindside flank, so there is an interesting dilemma facing Gold as he considers the make-up of his back row for the clash with Crusaders.

The Sharks might have to do without Frans Steyn, who faces the hearing into the appeal against last week’s decision to rescind his red card for the alleged tip tackle against the Chiefs.

The good news for the Sharks, said Gold, was that for once there were no injuries, and “also no Red Cards”.

A man Gold would love to have back in the mix sooner rather than later is Willem Alberts, but the big Springbok is taking longer than expected to get over the hamstring injury that has kept him sidelined for most of the early part of the season.

SuperSport