Under-fire Sharks head coach John Plumtree has fronted up after his team’s stuttering start to the URC, admitting he’s taken a hard look at himself and the way he manages preparation within the squad.
Coming off a winless tour and a heavy home loss to the in-form Ulster, the Sharks find themselves languishing near the bottom of the standings, desperate to find some form ahead of the November break. The Durbanites will be eager to break their duck against fellow strugglers the Scarlets at Kings Park on Saturday.
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,” said the 60-year-old coach.
“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 hand the captaincy to Bok enforcer Eben Etzebeth this week, rather than for last week’s fixture.
“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 Sports/Gallo Images
