Sharks Go Down Fighting   – Featured Durban Blog

After a courageous effort by the Cell C Sharks, who led for most of the match against the Reds, they were edged by 28-26 in a hot and humid Brisbane on Friday.

The positive intent was there from our young charges that faced a resurgent Reds’ side who have performed below their own standards in the last couple of years since winning the tournament in 2011.

For long periods, it seemed that we were just too good and in fact led for much of the game. It was only in the last 10 minutes that the Reds managed to finally break the advantage we had held, which allowed them to sneak in at the end.

It was most certainly a game that was all about pressure, and in all honesty, either team could have won.

It all started very well, with terrific defence forcing pressure on Quade Cooper as the home side tried to break through in the midfield, and Jean- Luc du Preez finished off the turn-over possession with less than two minutes of the game played. Lambie sent the ball sailing right through the middle of the uprights as we took an early lead.

The Reds hammered away and found a gap but couldn’t exploit the space. But they were rewarded with a penalty that Quade Cooper converted to put his team on the scoreboard a few minutes later.

The early parts of the game were a study in Reds attack vs Sharks defence, but again, pressure on defence led to turnover ball and although there was no try, there was a Lambie penalty to cancel out Cooper’s to restore the seven point lead.

With the first quarter of the game almost up, the Reds managed to work their way to just short of our tryline to set up an attacking scrum, but huge pressure from Beast earned a penalty and huge relief.

But another strong attack led to a second penalty with Cooper reducing the margin to four points in a game where possession was largely dominated by the home side. However, pressure once more turned into points, and Lambie kicked a second successful penalty to keep our side in the lead.

But the pressure from the Reds eventually took its toll as Scott Higginbotham managed to score off a ruck right up against the goal post. Cooper converted and it was Even-Stevens with just a handful of minutes left before half-time.

Pat Lambie did, however, have the last say as the Reds messed up a defensive lineout from their 22 which later led to a penalty that edged our team into a 16-13 half-time lead.

Once again, we struck the first blow in the second half with a strong build-up before Lambie knocked over his fourth penalty, but a series of penalty advantages led to the Reds back in our 22 with Samu Kerevi closing out his team’s second try. Cooper’s conversion attempt drifted wide with the Cell C Sharks retaining our lead, but only one point with half an hour to play.

But there was a sense that we were not going to take this lying down and continued to put pressure on the Reds who lost Kane Douglas to the sin bin for foul play. Down a man and Lambie electing to send a kickable penalty to touch rather, saw his forwards claim the lineout throw and drive over the tryline.  The TMO couldn’t see a reason not to award the try and Tera Mtembu was the man in possession, with Lambie stretching the lead to 26-18 with the final quarter left to play.

Kerevi had his second try referred to the TMO and again it was okayed with the Reds back in the hunt with Cooper missing again.

With 10 minutes left in a game poised on a knife’s edge, Cooper missed another kick as his success ratio dropped to 50%

But that didn’t matter as the Reds got over for a third try, replacement James Tuttle dragging two defenders over with him in the corner to take the lead for the first time in the match, albeit just two points.

The Reds lost a second player to the bin for reckless tackling and would spend the last five minutes of the game down to 14 men. This allowed Lambie to line up a difficult shot close to the touchline and over 40m out to retake the lead but it drifted across the uprights.

The knife had just got sharper with a couple of minutes left, but there were not enough to turn things around.

A bitterly disappointed Pat Lambie said afterwards: “We wanted to start off with a win, we hung on there but couldn’t turn it around. We had to make more tackles that we would have liked and our discipline wasn’t as good as we hoped for. We did show character there but just disappointed we didn’t get our hands on the ball enough and attack more.”

There is one more game on the road before the Cell C Sharks return home, and that is against the Brumbies on Saturday.  Our Sharks will take the many positives from this match and will determined to come out firing in Canberra.