Dick Muir – ‘We shot ourselves in the foot’

Editor

Sharks assistant coach Dick Muir says his side ‘shot themselves in the foot’ after losing 27-16 to the Stormers at Newlands on Saturday.

The Sharks missed a crucial opportunity to leapfrog the Rebels to move in eighth position and the last quarter-final spot after the Melbourne outfit had slipped up against the Reds earlier in the day.

They are now three points behind the Rebels and face the Jaguares in Durban next week, needing a victory and hoping Dave Wessels’ men come away with no points against the Highlanders in Dunedin.

“We did shoot ourselves in the foot a bit as our destiny was in our own hands and now it is not‚” Muir told Times Live.

“Maybe we can still get through but we have work to do and the way I see it we need to bank on beating the Jaguares with a bonus point.”

The former Springbok centre bemoaned the inconsistency that has plagued the Sharks’ season.

“We have one good game and then one bad one‚ we have one good half and then a poor half‚” Muir said.

“There is some work to be done to find out what is contributing to that.

“We went alright up front today‚ it was just a combination of errors. We made 14 handling errors‚ which was uncharacteristic.

“We had no real front-foot ball and we couldn’t get our offloading game going. The Stormers deserve credit for defending really well.

“We had decided to play wide to wide as we felt there were areas in the Stormers game that we could exploit.

“Maybe we tried to play a bit too much rugby. Maybe we should instead have been a little more direct.

“They were up for it and instead of us putting them under pressure it was they who reversed that pressure and we didn’t respond as well as we should have.”