Sharks captain Keegan Daniel, along with the rest of the squad, will be hoping to pick up his third Currie Cup winners’ medal (or rather beer mug) in just five years on Saturday, when his side faces Western Province in the final of the South African domestic showpiece. The skipper, however, has his eyes set on a far more significant achievement.
While the big picture for the Sharks has been quite rosy since that seminal Currie Cup triumph back in 2008, when they won the trophy for the first time in over a decade, Daniel himself is still desperately seeking his maiden trophy win as captain of the side. Sure, he’s held the Currie Cup trophy plenty of times over the last few years, but, significantly, has never been handed that (or any other) cup by anyone other than a team mate.
That’s not to say that Daniel’s record as captain isn’t impressive, mind you. First installed as captain for the Currie Cup campaign last year, with John Smit at the World Cup and Stefan Terblanche on his last legs, Daniel led the team all the way to the final and has repeated the feat in both Super Rugby and the Currie Cup in 2012; in other words, he’s reached the final of every competition in which he’s yet captained the Sharks, which is a pretty remarkable achievement in itself. Both of those finals, though, have been away from home and, significantly, both of those finals were lost.
While there is a fair bit of acknowledgement that the Sharks “got it wrong” last year in re-introducing jaded Springbok players en masse for last year’s Currie Cup final, there is a definite feeling that destiny was on the Lions’ side in that game; more so, the Sharks were probably never going to win this year’s Super Rugby final either, given the frankly ludicrous travel schedule they’d been put through leading up to it. Reasons, justifications and rationalisations exist aplenty, in other words, but for Daniel, a hat trick of final defeats within the space of a year is simply not on.
“We’ve got to win a final and we’re determined to do it and hopefully it will happen this time,” Daniel told reporters on Tuesday. “I think the boys have done pretty well to get here, but we still need one big performance on Saturday. Finals rugby you can win by one point or win by 40, it really doesn’t matter, we just want to win.”
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Thats the spirit Captain! And hopefully there is a second little prize waiting for you on 1 November as well! Lifting the Currie Cup would make that all the sweeter!
GO SHARKS!!!!!
Go Captain! Go Sharks!
Regardless of whether we win or lose the final I think it’s fair to acknowledge that Keegan has exceeded the expectations of many Sharks fans as captain of the side.
@vanmartin (Comment 4) : Amen to that!
I’l put all the money I’ve got on the sharks to win!!!
@Die Kriek (Comment 1) : Any idea if he finished top when voting closed?
@Seth101 (Comment 7) : He was at 20% and next was Eben at 16%, 5 minutes before voting ended.