Three away wins, one hostile French night, four early injuries in Cardiff and a first win at Munster. Tour captain Nick Hatton on what's brewing in Durban, and why nobody is getting complacent.
Hollywoodbets Sharks tour captain Nick Hatton led his team admirably under hugely testing conditions, facing adversity and multiple challenges as they took on some of rugby’s finest in France, Wales and Ireland, but the fortitude, character and desire was evident in every winning performance.
In previous seasons, away wins were not the norm, but this year, three wins on the trot in Europe show that something special is brewing at the Hollywoodbets Sharks.
“You can’t pin it down to one thing really,” Hatton admits as he reveals some insights into the team’s formula for success.
“We’ve worked hard on our connection in pre-season and especially on tour, that’s for players and management, and we have a strong leadership group working on and off the field on our standards and the way we want to go about things.
“The environment is also in a really healthy place. Winning does help, but it was even before that, during the pre-season when we started getting a good feeling about the environment.
“Technically we also have great coaches, and we’ve also been driving the way we play and how we represent the badge.”
Much of the team culture is what the coach wants out of his players and for head coach JP Pietersen, enjoyment was always vital. He would say, ‘if you’re not enjoying yourself then you’re probably in the wrong job,’ and this is something else Hatton understands.
“It’s not only enjoying what the game gives you, but enjoying the hard stuff, the physicality and being together. Off the field we enjoy ourselves and have a good time together, but once we’re on the field the emphasis is on working hard.
“We’ve also taken our preparation really seriously and then on game day it’s about enjoying it, being together as a team and that’s what makes rugby such a cool game, you can’t do it alone.”
Winning makes life easier and so much more enjoyable and a historic and successful tour certainly contributes to that.
“Winning overseas is not easy and not to be taken for granted, but we stayed together as a group and targeted this tour to perform better overseas, especially off the back of last year’s disappointing results out of the country.
“It was something we wanted to rectify and the way the Lyon game ended gave us a lot of confidence, particularly because France is quite a hostile place to play. The confidence in the group just grew, spending time together on tour and working hard during the week, and then in the Cardiff game we had quite a few unexpected injuries to key players, including our captain Andrew [Esterhuizen] in the first minute, but the way we stuck together and managed to pull that through gave us more confidence.
“And then the final game against Munster, we’d never won there – we haven’t won too many games in Ireland – but not conceding any tries summed up the way we wanted to play that game and we were obviously very chuffed with the result.”
While the overreaching conclusion after three weeks on tour and three away wins is a solid, if not spectacular, thumbs-up, looking at the three games, Hatton admits that each of them had their positives and picking the performance that brought the most pride is not easy.
“I think it’s super tough to pin down one, they were each special in their own right. After losing to the DHL Stormers, our first tour game against Lyon and a quick turn-around in France was really special.
“Then going into Cardiff losing four players inside the first 15 minutes or so and to come away with a win there after the reshuffle was massive credit to the group.
“We’d never won at Munster, but the boys were really keen and we got the job done.”
With four wins in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship and a win in their solo EPCR Challenge Cup fixture to date, plenty has been achieved, but there is still so much rugby left to play and Hatton warns that there can be no complacency for the remainder of a challenging and at times, gruelling season.
“We’ve had three good wins on the road, but we haven’t won anything yet; there’s no trophy and we haven’t made a play-off, it’s still too early for that. So there isn’t a reason in my mind to get complacent.
“We have some tough SA derbies around the corner, the DHL Stormers got one over us in Cape Town and they’re our next game and our focus will be on them and finding ways to be on the right side of the scoreboard.”
