RUGBY: Bulls say better team lost

Rupert Guinness Monday, May 21, 2007

Game over … Bryan Habana wins it for the Bulls. Photo: Reuters

Sharks 19 Bulls 20

SHATTERED Sharks coach Dick Muir summed up the view of everyone who witnessed the Super 14 final and agreed that the better team had lost: "We dropped the trophy this time and not the ball. Now we have to live with that."

Even the Bulls concurred. "You outplayed us for 79 minutes," captain Victor Matfield said to the Sharks after his side became South Africa's first Super champions - but only after coming from behind in the last play of the match to win 20-19.

"We really deserved that trophy the way we played," Muir said. "We had the chance to win."

The Sharks were cruelled in the 82nd minute at Durban's ABSA Stadium after winger Bryan Habana finished off a desperate multi-phased attack and left Derick Hougaard with an easy conversion to win.

It was one of the most amazing finales to a major game ever seen. While Habana's swerving run was brilliant, so, too, was the ability of the Bulls to keep the ball - and their hopes - alive after falling behind 19-13 when Sharks replacement lock Albert van den Berg went over in the 77th minute.

How winger Francois Steyn must have rued missing the conversion that would have given the Sharks a nine-point buffer and kept the Bulls out of reach. Yet the blame must be shared by Muir, who had taken off first-choice kicker Percy Montgomery.

But Sharks captain John Smit was gracious in defeat. "Our sadness is the Bulls ecstasy," he said.

The first all-South African final was played before a 54,000-strong crowd, who witnessed a tense and nerve-racking game.

Todd Louden, the Bulls Australian attack coach, had predicted as much. "It'll be one of those games where I don't think it will be over until the siren goes," he said before the match.

The way the Bulls played while the clock ticked down suggests they, too, believed the game would be decided at the death.

They were helped by the Sharks, who lacked the composure and confidence that saw them dominate the first 40 minutes and take a 14-10 lead into the break. In the 60th minute a Hougaard penalty brought the Bulls within a point, before the van den Berg try set up the frantic finish.

The Sharks inability to then close out the match reminded Queensland coach Eddie Jones of the 2000 Super 12 final, when Jones's Brumbies lost at home 19-20 to the Crusaders. "Probably the best team didn't win the game," said Jones. "They [the Sharks] did have the chance to put the game away and they didn't."

He added that "if you can stay close enough, get field position and get a bit of brilliance" then the less impressive team can win.

That brilliance came from Habana, and we're sure to be seeing more of it in the months to come.

BULLS 20 (Pierre Spies, Bryan Habana tries; Derick Hougaard 2 pens, 2 cons) bt SHARKS 19 (JP Pietersen, Albert van den Berg tries; Percy Montgomery 3 pens) at ABSA Stadium, Durban. Referee: Steve Walsh (NZL).

*Disclaimer - Views expressed within this story are not necessarily the views of this Blog