Sharks in Europe 2011-2012

By Whaley Shark
January 23 2012

 So our crusade for European glory ended last Thursday at a cold Edgeley Park, washed away in heavy sleet showers. I guess that was always the most likely outcome, given our big shakeup and a group with two French teams in it, especially as one of them was our nemesis Brive, yet again (note to ERC- can you please let them make someone else’s life a misery next year?). 

The Spaniards played their part, playing courageously but coughing up winning bonus points for all their opponents and confirming my view that rugby is very unforgiving game, amplifying relatively small margins in fitness, organisation and skill to give big differences in final score.

If they were ever really interested, Agen’s commitment was certainly not sustained beyond their back-to-back games against us, when we won 14-29 away and, a week later, just before Christmas, ran out comfortable winners in Stockport.

The group was ultimately decided by our two games against Brive. The away game was quite early on in the season, and our side, still gelling, was always going to find it difficult to win. In the event, that 26-18 defeat, with us frustratingly just outside losing bonus range, put Brive’s noses in front for the rest of the qualifying games and, come the last round, we were unable to catch them. Brive’s job last Thursday was quite simple- try not to lose, and if you do lose, then get a losing bonus point. And that was pretty much what they did. Plan A was clearly to defend solidly, and they certainly did that, snuffing out the few serious attacks that we were able to mount, proving very comfortable under a barrage of high balls plunging down in the sleet, and never letting us pull very far ahead. They played a very measured game in my view but weren’t scared to try and take their opportunities when they arose, putting our line under real pressure a couple of times in the first hour and, as the tension started to get to us, exploiting our errors to set up a good attack and nick a try in the corner which finally killed us off. I don’t think anyone can say they didn’t deserve the result. They came into the game with an advantage and exploited it patiently to come away with the win. We can add that to our ‘How to do it’ file.

As for us? Well, as others have pointed out, that was perhaps the first real pressure game this side has faced, and we fell short. There are lots of ‘If onlys’- if only Brive had decided to concentrate on their T14 campaign; if only we’d got a lucky break somewhere against them.... Well, it didn’t happen. I hope we’ll learn from it and I believe we will, but we’d better because, if we are in the Heineken next season, we’ll have a whole heap of pressure matches to deal with. And for the rest of this season, I guess we’ll be concentrating on the AP since our LV performances have been more than a bit iffy so far.

Having said all that, I feel we are developing. We now seem able to compete effectively against mid- and lower-ranked AP sides, although we are still inconsistent. I guess we need to iron out that variability, and work out how to handle top-of-the-table AP sides and the better European teams. In other words, we are where we should expect to be- a work in progress.