Bloemfontein – The Toyota Free State Cheetahs are upbeat ahead of their 3rd round Currie Cup clash when they face the Sharks in Durban on Saturday.
The men from Bloemfontein earned a full house of points when they beat their franchise neighbours, the Griquas 34-27 over the weekend.
Coach Rory Duncan lauded his young side for their much improved performance, but feels there’s always room for improvement.
"This was a much better performance than the one we delivered last weekend," Duncan said.
"We still made lots of mistakes, but that is a sign of a new team. We were much better on attack and defence and created lots of opportunities to score from, although we did not capitalise on all of them,” he added.
Although the side crossed the white wash on five occasions, the opportunities were there to score even more tries, had it not been for silly errors and handling mistakes.
"We need to make better use of the chances that are presented to us. We felt that we left 20 points out on the pitch that we didn’t score,” the coach said about the wasted opportunities.
The Cheetahs’ concentration slipped in the last ten minutes of the game, which saw the visitors score twice to make the score line slightly more respectable.
Griquas coach Hawies Fourie felt the side let themselves down
They got two points from the game, but that doesn’t change the fact that we are very disappointed with the result," Fourie said.
"We didn’t look like we wanted to play rugby. It looked like the guys jogged all the way from Kimberley before they ran out onto the field. That is something we must rectify during the coming week,” he conceded.
Scorers
Cheetahs: Tries – Elgar Watts, Sarel Pretorius, Rayno Benjamin, Raymond Rhule 2. Conv – Elgar Watts 2, Willie du Plessis. Pen – Elgar Watts.
Griquas: Tries – Wayne Stevens, Marnus Schoeman 2, Ederies Arendse. Conv – Nico Scheepers, Marais Schmidt. Pen – Nico Scheepers.
Yellow card – Steph Roberts (Griquas).
