Plumtree not oblivious to last season’s turbulences

This time last year, far from hitting the ground running in his second tenure as coach, it was with a resounding splat that the Sharks began the United Rugby Championship. They would go on to lose 11 of their first 12 games and some fans launched a petition calling for his removal.

A year or so on, Plumtree has recovered from that inauspicious start to bag two trophies — the Challenge Cup and the Currie Cup — and expectations are high as the Sharks play their first match of the new URC season this evening, against Connacht in Galway (8.35pm).

Plumtree is doing his best to play down those expectations but he admits that the team is unrecognisable from the confused bunch that could not grasp what he wanted when he first took over.

“It was a very difficult time,” the Kiwi says of his first months in charge. “The coaches were trying to work each other out. I knew almost nothing of the players I had inherited — I did not know their strengths and weaknesses and I had to work out who to keep and who to let go.

“I had introduced a new game model but it is hard to teach something to players who do not understand,” Plumtree explained.

“It is a totally different scenario now. The players are excited about how we want to play and the coaches are on the same page with me and doing a very good job. Where we were all over the show early last season, now we have a composed group and there is a nice synergy.”

Tonight the Sharks have a difficult opener against a tricky Connacht side that almost beat Munster, the 2023 champions, at their home ground in last week’s first round. Munster hung on to win 35-33 at Thomond Park.

“It is not an easy opening match,” Plumtree said. “Connacht are like any Irish side, they like to play a lot. They are very structured on attack and try to expose you in the middle of the park and then go wide.

“They like to build pressure with the ball, they are well drilled,” Plumtree continued. “They have a settled team, their players have been around for a while, and they are notoriously difficult to beat on their (synthetic) 5G pitch.”

Galway is exposed on the west Ireland coast and gets hammered by wind, rain, and cold. Predictably, those are the conditions predicted for tonight.

“They beat us here in Durban in our last match and we would have won if we had kicked a last-minute penalty (Boeta Chamberlain fluffed a shot at goal),” Plumtree recalls. “We played pretty well but they beat us, and the year before they beat us. So they have the wood on us. We will have to be at our very best to win this game.”

Sharks team - 15 Jordan Hendrikse 14 Eduan Keyter 13 Jurenzo Julius 12 Andre Esterhuizen 11 Ethan Hooker 10 Siya Masuku 9 Bradley Davids 8 Emmanuel Tshituka 7 Vincent Tshituka (captain) 6 James Venter 5 Gerbrandt Grobler 4 Jason Jenkins 3 Ruan Dreyer 2 Dylan Richardson 1 Ntuthuko Mchunu.

Bench: 16 Fez Mbatha 17 Trevor Nyakane 18 Hanro Jacobs 19 Corne’ Rahl 20 Reniel Hugo 21 Tino Mavesere 22 Tian Meyer 23 Gurswin Wehr.