As Super Rugby preparations are underway by all franchises early in January, a quick peek at some of the things popping out at the Cell C Sharks.
We take a quick look at Brendan Venter’s role while Gary Gold is still in Japan. Renaldo Bothma tells of his tremendous growth at the Sharks in pre-season and Giant Mtyanda is drafted in to train with the Sharks as extra lock cover.
Brendan Venter takes charge:
Brendan Venter has taken charge of the Sharks in pre-season with Director or Rugby Gary Gold still tied up with his commitments in Japan.
Gold was named Sharks Director of Rugby in October last year after the departure of Jake White.
But he still has commitments in Japan where he is finishing his stint as coach of the Kobe Steel Kobelco Steelers. Gold will join the Sharks early next month when they tackle French and European champions Toulon in a friendly clash.
In the meantime, Venter will prepare the team for this year’s Super Rugby competition. Venter helped coach the Sharks to Currie Cup glory in 2013 before White was given the head coaching job in Durban.
Throughout the year, Venter will offer insights to the Sharks in an advisory capacity.
Assistant coaches Brad MacLeod-Henderson, Sean Everitt and Paul Anthony are also on hand as the Sharks prepare for a training game against a team made up of various Durban clubs in two weeks, before heading off to France.
Renaldo Bothma:
New Sharks recruit Renaldo Bothma says his game has grown in leaps and bounds since coming under the pupilage of the Sharks and their technical director, Brendan Venter.
Bothma, who joined the Sharks in November last year after a stellar season with the Pumas in the Currie Cup, says he has developed at a rapid pace as a player since pre-season began at the Sharks mid-November.
The Sharks coaching set-up has a very different shape to the usual three-coach system that most teams adopt with Gary Gold heading up the team as Director of Rugby surrounded by a number of other men.
Brendan Venter is acting as an advisor for the season, but at present he is taking the lead in Gold’s absence, Currie cup coaches Brad Mcleod-Henderson (head coach), Sean Everitt (backline coach) and Paul Anthony (forwards caoch) as well as Michael Horack (defence coach) and Brad Mooar (specialist attack advisor) are all there in assistance.
“I have been enjoying it a lot and I have learned plenty form Brendan and all of the other guys,” Bothma said.
“I am growing as a player and I am looking forward to the season.
“I am feeling a lot more confident at the beginning of this season in comparison to this time last year, the time with Brendan, Brad, Sean Everitt and all the guys coaching us has helped me grow.
“I have developed so much in the last couple of weeks.”
Bothma puts his growth down to the Sharks multitude of coaches as well as the famed ‘Venter factor’
“Brendan is leading everything at the moment until Gary returns from Japan,” he continued.
“It makes it a bit easier having all these coaches around, every coach has a role to play and it makes the job a lot easier for Brendan and especially for the players.
“There are a lot of coaches looking at everything that we are doing so we are getting a lot of personal attention in the smaller details.
“If you are doing something wrong in defence for instance, there are a number of coaches who will come up to you and explain things further after training, it makes a huge difference to have a lot of coaches like that.”
Bothma is unsurprisingly looking to make an impact and to get as much game time as possible with the 2014 South African conference winners, as such he is willing to play anywhere to get on the park.
“I am quite mobile so I can play any position in the loose trio and for me, at this moment, as long as I get game time and get on the field I don’t care what position I play,” Bothma said
“I have enough belief in the coaches that they will put me in the right position for the benefit of the team.
“I am looking forward to the next couple of weeks and the start of the season so I can see where I am skills-wise and to see how much I have learnt in my short time with the Sharks.”
Giant Mtyanda:
Pumas lock Lubabalo “Giant” Mtyanda is training with the Sharks as they prepare for the Super Rugby competition.
The Sharks returned for pre-season training earlier this week, where a number of new faces were on show.
With Stephan Lewies still on the sidelines and Pieter-Steph du Toit still working his way back to fitness after a long injury lay-off, Mtyanda has been drafted into the Sharks squad as extra cover in the second row.
Mtyanda, 28, performed adequately for the Pumas in last year’s Currie Cup Premier Division and now has an opportunity to stake a claim for a place in the Sharks’ Super Rugby squad.
Assistant coach Sean Everitt said that Mtyanda was drafted in as back-up and that he’s done well in training. He also said the lock was thriving in their environment and settled in very well in Durban.
The Sharks will start their pre-season with a training game against a team made up of various Durban clubs in two weeks, before heading overseas to face the French and European champions, Toulon on 5 February.
They start their Super Rugby campaign at home against the Cheetahs on 14 February.
Jake the snake already warming up to the french
planetrugby.com
Oyonnax winger Silvère Tian didn’t mince his words when celebrating Saturday’s win over Jake White’s Montpellier.
The South African took charge for the second time since his arrival at Montpellier, having already ruffled some feathers in French rugby with his comments so far.
Tian, who scored two tries in the 20-13 win at the Stade Charles Mathon, now believes that White will be a little humbler with his words.
“They have a manager in Jake White, who was being a ‘smartarse’ and doesn’t know too much about French rugby. Already he’s criticised Montauban, but he doesn’t know what it is,” Tian told Rugbyrama.
“He thinks Oyonnax is a ProD2 team, so it was a pleasure to show him that the ‘ProD2 team’ really handed out a beating to his team of stars.
“We showed him that he must be humble. I think that will serve as a lesson.
“Winning against Toulon doesn’t mean they are the best, if you’re a world champion it doesn’t matter once you’re on the field!”
58 @ Stormersboy:
Interesting clients I had this morning… wanting to do a Logistics website
Had to use google tanslate
Mohed Altrad and all the MHR team apologizes to Union Sportive Montalbanaise for remarks made two days ago ,” he tweeted on Friday club.
Wednesday on the sidelines of his presentation to the press , the coach of the Springboks 2007 World Champion said: “Playing in Montauban, in a field in front of five people and a dog, it does not interest me.”
Champion of France 1967, the US Montauban is an iconic French rugby club landscape , including its historical Sapiac stadium (12,500 seats approximately ) that allows him this season to have the third cumulative influx of D2 behind Perpignan and Pau.
grootblousmile wrote:
😀
When are the Superbru pools opening up?
grootblousmile wrote:
Sounds interesting!
@ MacroBull:
@ 61
Nice to see a player not too scared to say his say.
Did you see Chris Gayle also had a proper go at the WI cricket regime for being so silly to leave Pollard and Bravo out of the WC team?
@ robzim:
Yes Gayle also didn’t sign a central contract with the WI. So he can pretty much say what he likes.
One of the reasons why players like Miller, Behardien, Ingram, Rilee Rossouw cannot really settle at international level, should be leveled at the selectors/team management. These guys are yo-yoing in and out of the team or up and down the order when they are in the team.
Look at Rossouw for example. He scored a 50 on Friday when he batted in the middle order. The next game he had to open and he duly failed. In 5 games he has now batted as an opener (1), no. 3 (3) and at no. 4 (1). When/where is he going to establish himself?
Miller: In 27 innings’ he has batted at no 4 (3), no. 5 (9), no. 6 (13) and no. 7 (2). Incidentally he averages 57 at no. 4 with a S/R of 162. His highest average in the other positions is 27.
Behardien: In 12 innings’ he has batted at no. 4 (1), no. 5 (4), no. 6 (6) and no. 7 (1). He averages 30.66 batting at 6 with a SR of 122. In the other ositions, he averages less than 10.
Ingram: In 9 innings’ he has batted at no. 3 (7) and at no. 5 (2). He averages 77 batting at 5 with a S/R of 177.
Now, since Faf ha claimed the no. 3 spot for himself and Ingram is not in the squad, would a batting lineup like this not make more sense.
1. Morne
2. Reeza
3. Faf
4. Miller
5. Rilee
6. Behardien
7. Ontong
Afa the performance of our bowlers yesterday are concerned. Nobody has yet mentin the role our bowling coach (read AD) has played in the bowling plan. It was obvious that the plan was to bowl full in a bit to curb Gayle. Maybe it was a good plan, I don’t know. But the margin for error is so small that every time they didn’t get t right, they went over the boundary, be it through the air or along the ground. This is the 2nd time where I noticed that our bowling plan was wrong. When we were in Aus for the ODI series, we bowled short of a length and the Aussies kept hitting fours. Maybe time o look elsewhere and not just blame the bowlers.
robzim wrote:
Their loss and our advantage.
Pollard is sometimes like having a second Gayle in the team.
It’s not as if they have a bunch of devastating bowlers, at best they have 1 or 2, so they may as well load the team with all rounder types who can hit the snot off the ball like Pollard.
Gayle won’t fire every single game.
The thing with the bis and pieces type of players that WI have is that their bowlers will come unstuck more often then not if they have to defend a total. I agree with GBS in this regard. One way of beating them is to win the toss and send them in to bat first.
We’ve tried winning the CWC with our all rounders over the years and always failed. This year, for the 1st time, it seems that the selectors went for specialist batsman and bowlers for the most part. Maybe our luck will change.
Nama wrote:
I have been giving your comments about Behardien some thought and I think that I may have been prematurely harsh on him, especially for a batsman usually coming in lower down the order.
I expect that he will get some time in the WC and hope for his (and our) sake that he can get some runs.
Time will tell I guess.
I recall a conversation (one sided) between an old school father of a mate of mine (long since passed on) where he was moaning about the choice of Hashim Amla in the SA team for similar reasons.
I expect he is eating humble pie wherever he is at the moment, and for some time already.
For the record, not every player of colour is considered a quota by me, including players like Ontong, Robbie P, Lobsie, Big Vern, Hash (obviously) JP (big fan) and some others that don’t immediately come to mind.
@ Nama:
bis = bits
@ Stormersboy:
“For the record, not every player of colour is considered a quota by me…”
I never thought you did.
It just bugs me that players of colour work hard to make the team, doing better than most at franchise level, and when they fail at international level, they are labeled as quotas. As if they never deserved to be selected in the 1st place. All the players that you mention above have been labeled as quotas at some stage, be it at the start of their career (Amla, Vern, Ontong) or when they started to lose some form (Lopsy). To me, that’s just wrong.
If a player ofcolour is not good enough anymore (or from the beginning), by all means criticize him and ask for him to be dropped but don’t bring his colour into it because that is what you do every time you call him a quota. If he is kak then he is kak not because of his colour.
What are the odds that Amla will be called a quota again if he goes through a lean patch at some stage? (touch wood)
@ Nama:
All the players that you mention above have been labeled as quotas at some stage, be it at the start of their career (Amla, Vern, Ontong) or when they started to lose some form (Lopsy).
I do not mean by you.
70 @ Nama:
I was just looking outside to see if it was raining… and it almost looks that way…
I mean when YOU agree with me, it is a strange occurrence!
74 @ Nama:
PS! You are not a Quota Blogger here on Rugby-Talk!
Hahaha
Nama wrote:
Yeah I know (I’m not that sensitive 😉 ) Written text can never accurately convey tone.
The thing is, for as long as there are quotas in place, these guys will never get a fair shake by many people.
When Alviro started (with a century on Debut) he showed great promise. His last couple of years though, he seemed to hang around in the team despite a continued lack of form and that’s where the quota aspect can rear its head and possibly lead to unfair treatment of a player (to his advantage).
We will always have this sort of sensitivity, both by me and you, that’s just what makes us human I guess.
A quick story:
In my banking days I worked for one of the leading private banking institutions, and one of my clients was an accounting firm, the managing partner (who i always dealt with) being Haroon Lorgat. A greater gentleman and astute mind would be hard to find. Back in those days he was serving on the committee of the WPCC and hadn’t yet gained national (or international) status as an administrator.
Having grown up in the apartheid years I had heard nothing of Haroon’s cricketing career and the opportunities denied him as a result of the policies of the day. One of his colleagues, who was eager to tell me of his exploits (Haroon would never have done it himself, he was far too humble) called him “the Asian Jonty Rhodes” .
Having listened to the stories over time (it was always a pleasure to visit their offices, sadly the Gatesville firm has now been swallowed up by one of the big ones) it became clear to me that we had missed out on watching him (and many others) over the years which was a great shame.
Being an important client he was duly invited to our annual golf day and he and his 4 ball (some of his sporting mates) proceeded to clean up the rest of the field. When his name and the 4 ball were called up to collect the prizes for the best 4 ball of the day some of the audience (having consumed a lot of alcohol and not having a cooking clue who this man is and what he had achieved) began to murmur under their breath, almost implying that they, as Indians, had probably crooked their scorecard.
I was greatly embarrassed and ashamed on that day. If I were announcing I would have given a brief CV of the players but was still just a youngster.
To his credit, reinforcing his class, Haroon pretended to not notice (I doubt that he did not notice, nor was this the first time that this had happened), and collected his prize with the gentle demeanor and quiet confidence that I knew to be his nature.
When they speak of Hashim Amla as “the peaceful one” I always think of Haroon first.
Now if ASBAKKIE (Ashley) does not come blog soon again, I might be forced to consider him a Quota Blogger and a Quota Friend… eish!
77 @ Stormersboy:
Flok, your quick story was not so quick… Mr PretoriaBoy (Think the name StormersBoy is hugely outdated by now)!
grootblousmile wrote:
Imagine how long it took me to write (and proofread lol)
64 @ Stormersboy:
When I’m good and ready… hehehe
It’s only been shifted forward a day at a time now for a week.
I want to create 3 new Pools (SIX Nations, Varsity Cup, Super Rugby and Cricket World Cup)… wait that is 4 Pools, not 3.
grootblousmile wrote:
Fair enough
grootblousmile wrote:
Dis nou amper soos toe jou graad 1 Juffrou jou moes leer om jou hande uit jou sakke te haal voordat jy tot tien tel anders bly jy elf kry 😛
80 @ Stormersboy:
Een vingertjie tik… hahaha
83 @ Victoriabok:
Vlok ek het elke keer 13 gekry en tussenin ping-pong ook gespeel met my hande in my sakke!
Een twee ping pong
Drie vier ping pong
Vyf ses ping ping pong
Sewe agt ping ping ping pong
Nege tien barra bing ting ting ping pong
Elf Pong
Twaalf ping
Dertien pong… oops
My Graad 1 juffrou was Juffrou de Waal… goeie juffrou gewees!
@ grootblousmile:
Be prepared to be surprized every now and then.
@ Stormersboy:
“We will always have this sort of sensitivity, both by me and you, that’s just what makes us human I guess.”
Sadly, that’s true.
As long as we can respectfully engage, it is not that big a problem imo. It would’ve been a very dull world if we always have to agree on everything and, as we know, SA is everything but dull.
PS: Great story about Lorgat. His humbleness shone through again in 2013 when he was willing to take the back seat so that the Indian cricket tour could go ahead despite the fact that he was just appointed as CEO of CSA a couple of months or so before the tour commenced.
Nama wrote:
Yes a true servant of the game, not an egoist like many of them.
@ grootblousmile:
Jy bedoel jou Sub A juffrou. 😉
88 @ Nama:
Neeee, in die Transvaal het ons grade gehad, nie subbe nie!
Hey, ek het nounog van my Graad 1 Boeke… damn ek was flokken voorbeeldig en netjies daai tyd!
Goue sterretjies oral!
Ek het gekook met blou, rooi en groen klei!
Damn, onthou julle ook die “Mossie en Baas” leesboek?
Dit was eers in Std 2 toe ek begin uitrafel het… hahaha
@ grootblousmile:
O ja. Het julle nie ook trimesters gehad terwyl de res van ons kwartale gehad het nie?
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