Gold chats ahead of Reds clash

Angus Gardner will referee the action in Brisbane.

Gary Gold spoke to the media today.

Here is the full interview.

Injuries

It was an extremely physical game so the guys are very sore, but by and large, we’re in a good position. Willem Alberts is sore, Beast is still sore and Dale received a cut above his eye at training on Tuesday, so we’ll have to see how everyone is tomorrow. But we’re hoping for more or less a clean bill of health.

What has the team taken out of the match against the Waratahs

An improvement on the week before, although it was a poor start conceding a relatively soft try early on. But we showed massive character for the rest of the game and to get back into a position where we could have won the game. For the second week in a row we crossed the line a couple of times, unfortunately it wasn’t to be. I thought S’bura did very well, it was just unfortunate that he was deemed to be forced into touch and Lwazi did outstandingly well to try stop their try. So you can’t fault the effort of the players. It’s not going for us at the moment but there was a huge amount of character shown, some cracking tries and some really good rugby. But from our point of view, obviously bitterly disappointed not to be getting the results.

Finishing off with a win - how much of an effect would that have on confidence and on the feeling that you’re on the right track

It’s critically important. We had a shocking first week against the Highlanders then two good performances where we weren’t on the right side of the scoreboard. On other days, they might have gone our way, but the fact of the matter now is that the Reds seemed to have turned the corner and it’s important for us to do the same thing. We understand that there’s a huge amount of pressure that we’re under, but I have to say, the guys are up for the task. The training has been very good this week and everyone is really looking forward to finishing off the tour on a high and giving our supporters a little to cheer about.

Reds are in a pretty similar place to the Sharks with expectations exceeding results

They are. They’re at home and we’re away from home, which is a big factor. We saw how well they pitched up against the Rebels at their own stadium last week. It’s important for us to worry about ourselves at the moment. We know we have a good team, we’re trying to play a  brand of rugby that asks questions with ball in hand, but by the same token we can’t compromise ourselves from a defensive point of view, and we have done, so we realise the areas we need to improve on. A really good performance and a win this weekend against the Reds is critically important for our campaign and confidence.

Reds as a team

You look at the players in their team - Slipper, Horwell, Genia, Turner, O’Connor – these are really good rugby players, highly experienced internationals and this is a team going through a similar season to us. A couple of injuries, a couple of poor performances and they’ve found themselves on the end of a couple of bad results. But credit to them, they turned the corner last weekend against a good Rebels team and we know we’re going to have our hands full this weekend.

Improvement in Sharks attack

We crossed the tryline five times against the Hurricanes, although two of them weren’t awarded, and we crossed the tryline a few times this weekend and one wasn’t awarded. So we’re creating opportunities and very nearly finishing them. I’m excited about that, I’m excited about our counter-attack and I’m excited about how we look with ball in hand. But we’re not fooling ourselves, we realise that we need a vast improvement in our defence. But we have some young guys on the park who are learning a huge amount. Coupled with the fact that we look quite good with ball in hand and I have no doubt we can only improve. I’m reasonably encouraged by the fact that the issues we’re getting wrong are very fixable.  

(File Photo: Andre Bloem)

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