It was like the old prepandemic times as I attended three live games in a week. They provided interesting fodder for thought, first on how the Sharks’ gifted but often flawed Curwin Bosch should be managed and on the role the Currie Cup could play in providing a platform for players going through a confidence crisis.
The first of the matches I attended was the first-round United Rugby Championship (URC) clash between the Sharks and Stormers at Kings Park. It coincided with a media weekend hosted by the Sharks at which Sharks CEO Eduard Coetzee, in response to a question on Bosch’s future, spoke about the flyhalf’s need to regain confidence. Coetzee spoke about the Currie Cup being the perfect vehicle for Bosch to do that.
So, Bosch didn’t play in the URC game, in which the Sharks were held to a draw and will feel they fluffed for several reasons, not the least of them being a wayward performance by the place-kickers. Each time a kick was missed, you could almost hear some Sharks fans groaning “Oh, if we only had Curwin Bosch”.
Roll on a few days to the Sharks beating WP in the domestic competition and voila, there was Bosch, after a shaky start, regaining his old poise and confidence and doing well both in kicking from hand and from the tee.
I was back in Cape Town at the weekend to see the Stormers comprehensively outplay the Sharks in the return URC game, and again the kickers were in focus. The physical aggression and line-speed of the Stormers’ defensive system probably forced the Sharks to kick more than they wanted to, and it was their winning of the aerial battle in the first half that kept the visitors in the game.
Made kick
The Sharks never got many chances to kick for posts in Cape Town, so there shouldn’t be any complaint about the placekicking this time. But kicking became a focus at the postmatch media conference because of what the Stormers did to win the game — both their two tries were set up by field position created by 50/22s, the new law innovation that enables the attacking team to throw the ball in at the lineout if they kick the ball from behind their own 10m line and get it out beyond the opposition 22 without an opposition player touching it.
In the first half it was Stormers fullback Warrick Gelant who produced the 50/22 that set up the field position that led ultimately to a try for Seabelo Senatla, and in the second it was flyhalf Manie Libbok who made the kick and lock Adre Smith scored.
The Stormers always looked like winning, but those were pivotal moments in the game. The Sharks were unable to respond in kind, but I did see Bosch do it to WP in the midweek game in Durban. So given how good Bosch was in the Currie Cup and how the Sharks appear to have struggled with aspects of their kicking game and even game management in the past two games in the higher-echelon competition, there will inevitably be calls for him to be included as the Sharks No 10 for this week’s crucial visit to Loftus to play the Bulls.
Sharks coach Sean Everitt should think twice about that and instead stick to his plan to give Bosch a longer opportunity to regain the shattered confidence that Coetzee spoke about before the first Sharks-Stormers game.
Front physically
Everitt made the point to me when we bumped into each other at the Sharks-WP match in midweek that perhaps the system has let Bosch down in the sense that he was selected into senior rugby the year after he left school. He thus never got a chance to dominate age-group rugby like some of his contemporaries have.
If Bosch, who was playing as a boy against men when he first started senior rugby and has always carried question marks over his ability or willingness to front physically both with ball in hand and when defending, feels like he has been chasing his tail and been playing catch up his whole career, you can hardly blame him.
It is understood he is looking to leave the Sharks, but regardless of his intentions, it would make sense for him to be given an extended run, and a proper chance to regain his confidence and possibly dominate at a slightly more forgiving and less frenetic level of the game, in the Currie Cup.
He is still only 24 and perhaps he can use the Currie Cup to build confidence and hone the skills he needs to work on in a less exacting environment and with less of a spotlight shone on him. He can thus get the opportunity he was denied when he missed out on playing age-group rugby and perhaps develop his playing style to a point where he will better suit the Sharks template than what he was before he was dropped.
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