Skipper tells Force to sharpen up

[travelling_gerry]

Sharpe says that the key to toppling South Africa’s highly-rated Sharks will be overcoming their slow starts after conceding early leads to their opponents too often this year.

The Sharks will start favourites in their final match on tour despite their shock loss to the Reds in Brisbane last week and remain $3.75 favourites to claim the Super 14 title.

But the Force, who are 21-1 outsiders in the title race, will be out to prove the doubters wrong and back up a home win against the Cheetahs last month with another victory on Saturday night.

“We’ve spoken about (the slow starts), obviously it’s probably cost us a little bit.

We’ve started far too slowly and teams get the early jump on us,” Sharpe said.

“The pleasing part is that we finish strongly and when we have played some good attacking football and we’ve looked very good. So it’s about implementing that earlier and I’m sure we will tomorrow night.”

While he believes his side is in with a real show tomorrow night in front of their home fans, Sharpe is a believer in the hype surrounding the Sharks.

“I think there’s a lot of teams that are putting their hands up as the benchmark. But certainly to win four games out of five is a very good achievement and they’ll be looking to finish their tour strongly,” Sharpe said.

In other news, RugbyWA and the Western Force have received a major financial boost with the ‘Old Golds’ donating $400,000 to the Force 15 Foundation.

The Foundation was formed to forge a link between Perth business leaders and RugbyWA and aims to assist the long-term development of rugby union in WA.

The Old Golds are a group of former WA rugby representatives.

PERTH
SHAYNE HOPE

http://www.thewest.com.au/default.as...ntentID=131374

[Bronski Beat]

Sharpe says that the key to toppling South Africa’s highly-rated Sharks will be overcoming their slow starts after conceding early leads to their opponents too often this year.

The Sharks will start favourites in their final match on tour despite their shock loss to the Reds in Brisbane last week and remain $3.75 favourites to claim the Super 14 title.

But the Force, who are 21-1 outsiders in the title race, will be out to prove the doubters wrong and back up a home win against the Cheetahs last month with another victory on Saturday night.

“We’ve spoken about (the slow starts), obviously it’s probably cost us a little bit.

We’ve started far too slowly and teams get the early jump on us,” Sharpe said.

“The pleasing part is that we finish strongly and when we have played some good attacking football and we’ve looked very good. So it’s about implementing that earlier and I’m sure we will tomorrow night.”

While he believes his side is in with a real show tomorrow night in front of their home fans, Sharpe is a believer in the hype surrounding the Sharks.

“I think there’s a lot of teams that are putting their hands up as the benchmark. But certainly to win four games out of five is a very good achievement and they’ll be looking to finish their tour strongly,” Sharpe said.

In other news, RugbyWA and the Western Force have received a major financial boost with the ‘Old Golds’ donating $400,000 to the Force 15 Foundation.

The Foundation was formed to forge a link between Perth business leaders and RugbyWA and aims to assist the long-term development of rugby union in WA.

The Old Golds are a group of former WA rugby representatives.

PERTH
SHAYNE HOPE

http://www.thewest.com.au/default.as...ntentID=131374

At least they have spoken about the slow starts.

Clearly Sharpie has entered into a series of robust discussions with the individual stakeholders representitives collectivelly and on an individual basis punctuated by a series of smaller workshop type of meetings to discuss the terms of reference that can be spoken about to the group as a whole. The resolve from this type of open round table discussion is far more advantagious to the collective whole and would no doubt produce a positive outcome. The tone of these discussions would have no doubt been very incouraging given the prevailing state of the union.

The outlook is now good.

[Thequeerone]

Where's that sign of Coaches the one about not feeding the Trolls