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Plumtree: Our season is 'dead'

Cape Town - Sharks coach John Plumtree believes their hopes of making the Super Rugby playoffs are all but gone after suffering a fifth straight loss.

Despite a valiant second half performance against the Reds on Friday, when they trailed 29-3 at the break, the Sharks still walked away empty handed with a 32-17 loss. They have slipped behind fellow strugglers the Stormers to 11th spot in the overall log.

While the coach was pleased with their second half fight back in Brisbane, he rued their effort in the first 40.

"You can't give a side like the Reds that type of possession from unstructured defence," Plumtree told the sportal.com.au website.

"They were just deadly from turnover ball.

"I thought the more of that they got, the more confident they got, and we couldn't help ourselves, we just kept on giving it to them.

"So it was a terrible performance in that first half."

Plumtree was also upset at certain players for under-performing yet again.

"There's some individuals there that just let themselves down big time," he said.

"This week we talked about how important our defence would be but there's one or two players out there that are just out of form.

"There's some things that we can change, but there's some things we can't change because of the situation we've got with injuries, so we just have to keep boxing on."

Plumtree is also not very upbeat about their chances of staying alive in 2013.

"I think we're dead now," he said.

"It's just been a terrible season for us."

The Sharks conclude their Australasian tour with a game against the Force in Perth on Friday (13:45 SA time).
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