Head coach John Plumtree said the Sharks paid the price for a lack of execution at lineout and scrum time in a nail-biting loss to the Cheetahs on Sunday.
Eben Etzebeth, Grant Williams, Francois Venter and Makazole Mapimpi dotted down for the Sharks in an eight-try thriller in Bloemfontein, where the lead changed hands four times before Cohen Jasper crossed to clinch a 32-29 win for the Cheetahs.
Having thrashed Pau to kick off their maiden campaign in the Challenge Cup, the Sharks have scored 10 tries across two rounds of the competition, but Plumtree isn’t impressed with his charges’ failure to launch in the set pieces.
Speaking post-match at Free State Stadium, he told reporters: “We didn’t put the game out of reach when we could. We had two or three chances there.
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“We could have easily won the game, but our scrum was not good enough towards the end.
“I can come up with quite a few excuses, but I don’t want to take that away from the Cheetahs, they showed great character. They clearly have some really good players here. They are well organised and really wanted it.
“But we also didn’t help ourselves with the fixed facets that didn’t function. Our lineouts were disappointing in the first half. When we corrected that in the second half, we were back in the game.
“It’s a big part of our game that we haven’t got right yet.”
The Sharks hit the road again next week to tackle the DHL Stormers in the Vodacom URC, before another local derby against the Lions in Durban on 6 January.
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