Water off a duck’s back. That was the reaction of the Sharks to Blues coach David Nucifora’s sour-grapes comments in New Zealand after arriving home from defeat in Durban.
Mike Greenaway reports in The Mercury.
Australian Nucifora suggested that refereeing interpretations accounted more for his team’s loss than the Sharks’ performance.
He denied that the Durban team were the Blues’ bogey side – or serious title contenders – even though the Blues had lost four in a row to the Sharks.
John Plumtree, the Sharks’ forwards coach, was amused more than anything else.
“At the end of the day, they might not rate us, but it was us who took the points,” he smiled.
“We are getting used to David complaining. He criticised us last year (in Auckland) for being over-vigorous and may well have had a cry after the semifinal (in Durban), I am not sure.
“I wonder if he criticised the referee after they won by 50 points in Bloemfontein the week before?” he said.
“The thing is, we knew what to expect with the referee (Australian Brett Bowden).
“In the modern, professional game you play to the referee. In any case, we were the team that was heavily penalised by the ref – the Blues had 10 free kicks and 10 penalties and we had two free kicks and two penalties,” added Plumtree.
Nucifora said the Sharks would find touring tough after having lost several experienced Springboks since last year. He said the Sharks were “good at the style of game you saw really well”, hinting that they were a limited team.
Again, Plumtree was indifferent to the comments.
“We knew that we could not let them have space and time to attack. We were aggressive in what we did (not letting them play), because we knew we had to be,” said Plumtree.
Nucifora accused the Sharks of “flopping over” at the rucks to slow the ball down and of not rolling away after tackling.
Plumtree responded: “We have found that referees are very strict on the tackler rolling away, and we have been practising doing that. But we have found that often it is very hard to roll away because the first and second arrivals at the tackle-ball get there so fast.”
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God, what is it with these people? You don’t have a God-given right to win every game you play!
10/10 for PLumtree: “and may well have had a cry after the semifinal (in Durban), I am not sure.”
Nucifora has been ‘outcoached’ by Dick and Plum for 2 years in a row but he hasnt accepted that fact yet, still in denial, therefore the sour grapes
You can’t compare this oke with Robbie Deans. Deans just gets on with it, the consummate professional. No sour grapes, no whining, takes his (incredibly few) losses with grace and learns from them.
and in the back of his mind he’s still sour about losing out to Deans over the Aussie coaching job.
if de Villiers backs out of the Bok coaching job as its suggested he might in another article, we could end up having Dick vs Deans at international level 🙂
in
Personally, I love this reaction.
Nothing better than an opponent who refuses to belive that you may have better him in certain areas – he underestimates you and doesn’t prepare for your next encounter properly.
You are right David – and additionally, I swear I saw Suzie in the stands too.
As an aside, when are our players (ok, speaking about the Sharks mostly here) gonna wise up and pull the opposition over the top of the ruck – especially if he is stronger than the defending player?
Its often much easier and more effective than trying to clean him off, and can result in a nice string of free-kicks.
Dick for Bok coach… HM coaxed out of sales repping for the forwards coach… and Scott Johnson from Aus as the attack coach… whoo hooo!
Yes yes I know 😉
tell ‘im ‘e’s DREAMIN!
typical aussie