Durban - Despite their bonus point victory over Griquas, Sharks coach John Plumtree is concerned over the constant errors his players are committing.

“Mistakes, basic errors, missed touches, just one thing after another,” Plumtree told Sharks website editor, Michael Marnewick, summing up his thoughts after the match.

There was no mincing of words when he pointed out that the Sharks hadn’t played with the kind of accuracy needed, or that they are capable of producing.

“We just don’t look like we have any confidence, our big players are letting us down, it’s hard to watch which is sad because we think we’re better than that. We’re clearly lacking a bit of grunt upfront, in terms of getting go-forward ball and that’s making it pretty hard for us to play. Basic errors are inexcusable at this level.

“When your first kick-off goes into touch, followed by two more mistakes after that, that puts you under pressure. Clearly there are some minds that are elsewhere, we’ll have to do some soul searching.”

Missing some of their big name players to the Springboks, these are amongst the ones who are their strike weapons with the ball.

“We’re not quite sure how we’re going to get that go-forward, we don’t look like we have the carriers to get us across the advantage line.”

While there were positives to come out of the game, the coach was still more perturbed than pleased. “We stole a lot of their ball which was really satisfying, I thought Jacques Botes was pretty hard on the ball which was great, Keegan Daniel backed him up as did Jean Deysel, but we made some defensive errors.

"The harder we try, it feels like the worse we are getting. There was a general frustration amongst the group and when the lights went out, it did us a bit of a favour, we were able to regroup and play better for the last 10 minutes before half time," said Plumtree.

Along with the Boks players over in New Zealand, hooker Craig Burden also missed the game through injury, but his replacement, Kyle Cooper, certainly delivered the goods. “I thought Kyle was probably the best forward on the field, he was outstanding and I have a lot of faith in him. There was obviously some pressure on him at lineout time, but I thought he was pretty good out there.”

Injury-wise, the Sharks appear to have lost another player. Louis Ludik broke a bone in his foot and will, in all likelihood, miss the rest of the campaign. But it is in the forwards, and particularly the front row where they need to manage their players best.

“It’s a long season for a front row, we’ve lost Burden and Dale Chadwick is playing a lot of rugby, Wiehahn Herbst is carrying a groin injury and might have aggravated it, our stocks are getting low. We’ve lost pretty much a whole forward pack from Super Rugby. These guys need to find some belief in their ability, but at the moment, they’re struggling," said Plumtree.

Adi Jacobs continues to make an impact off the bench and Plumtree hinted that he could play a bigger role. “I’ll have to consider starting him, we’re at that point, he’s so good off the bench, we saw that again and Meyer Bosman going to 10 was good as well. We have to look at selection, what we’re serving up isn’t good enough.”

Plumtree is nevertheless happy that they still managed five log points against a team that was fighting for its life.

“We wanted to get a bonus point, that was important and I would have been happy with just a win the way we played, but the boys backed themselves which was good to see.”