Plumtree laments poor Sharks skills against Zebre and calls for major improvement against Leinster

John Plumtree was a dissatisfied coach on Saturday evening after his team had repeatedly shot themselves in the foot to labour to a 35-34 defeat of Zebre, a team in 15th position on the United Rugby Championship table.

Plumtree warned his charges all week that Zebre would not be pushovers after winning five games this season but he said it was poor skills rather than lack of effort that almost caused a monumental upset in Durban.

“It is going to take a while to digest this performance,” the exasperated Plumtree said.

“It just shows you that, no matter who you are playing against, if your skill sets are poor and you can’t build pressure with the ball, and you don’t play in the right areas, and your kicking is not good, and you are not winning the aerial battle, you are in for a long day.

“Zebre have some exceptional attacking players, especially their fullback (Geronimo Prisciantelli) and they punished us when we gave them ball in unbroken play.”

The Sharks forwards did their job but it was in the wider channels that they kept throwing the ball away to the grateful Italians.

“We have a big physical pack and I thought our forwards were very good  the scrumming and mauling were excellent.

“But in the middle of the park our skills were very poor,” the coach lamented. “We turned over possession and allowed their dangerous backs to hurt us. So we will look at that. Our kicking wasn’t good and out inability to win our contestable kicks hurt us.”

Plumtree said his team made it easy for Zebre, who scored four tries to the Sharks’ five.

“When you are not nailing your skills, you make life hard for yourselves and easy for the opposition.

“I think the team was up for it emotionally, we had a very good week. I’m not pointing a finger at us not being mentally in the right space. I just feel our basic skills were poor and it nearly cost us the match.

“Some of our combinations did not click today, especially in the backs. The team will be hard on themselves. There are a lot of proud Springboks. They will put their hands up and say this was not good enough.

“But the coaches also need to look at what we could have done better. There will be a deep dive into us.”

As disappointing as the Sharks were, they nevertheless banked five crucial log points.

“The points are in the bank but we have a tough side next week and we know we can’t be this poor against Leinster.

“They will punish and not give us the soft moments that Zebre did.

“In a way this performance is good for us. We have struggled with consistency in selection because of injuries, and we have had a disjointed schedule with weeks off all the time. So we have an opportunity to build on this with Leinster upon this coming week.

“We are a bit ‘Jekyl and Hyde’ at the moment — we are not sure what side is going to turn up, and we need to fix that.

“We are in the top four but we feel we have not got going yet. That is the encouraging part.”