Under-fire Sharks coach John Plumtree has fronted up after his team’s poor start to the URC season.
After a winless tour and a home loss to Ulster, the Sharks are 14th on the log and desperate to find some form ahead of the November break.
The Durbanites face fellow strugglers the Scarlets at Kings Park on Saturday.
On Thursday, Plumtree acknowledged that his star-studded team’s performances haven’t met expectations, and that he’s not exempt from scrutiny.
“I’ve had a look at myself and the way potentially I could’ve managed those two days of preparation better – what I could’ve done more, what I could’ve done less – and taken that onboard,” he said.
“Everyone is working as hard as possible, and sometimes when you do that, you still don’t get what you want.
“It’s important that we don’t just chuck all our processes out. It’s important that we all go to work and ask for more effort, ask for more fight, and then prepare as well as we can.”
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Plumtree, who returned to Durban for his second stint in charge in 2023, admitted that the pressure of results forces him to separate what he can and can’t control.
“There are some things that I can control and those are things that I look to make sure that I nail personally in my job,” he continued. “But there are also some things I can’t control. I needed to look at myself, and that’s what I’ve done.”
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The veteran coach also addressed his decision to hand the captaincy to Bok enforcer Eben Etzebeth this week, rather than last week.
“Eben was always going to be our captain this season,” Plumtree explained. “We just thought that with the week he had last week – he only trained once and they had the baby on the Thursday, then he played on the Saturday – his preparation was far from ideal and we didn’t want to add the extra burden of the captaincy on top of that.”
Photo: Steve Haag/Gallo Images
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