The unbearable weight of negativity

Like so many kids in the ‘80s, I had a weird fear of quicksand when I was young. Completely irrational, of course – how many of us have actually encountered quicksand in our daily lives? No, it turns out that perhaps the real quagmire we need to fear getting sucked into is negativity (maybe the Swamp of Sadness in the Neverending Story wasn’t too far off the mark, after all).

But what does that have to do with rugby? As the dust has settled on another URC, and we’re still waiting for the beautiful chaos of Springbok season to kick off, I find myself reflecting on the Sharks’ performance this year. It was a season characterised by an astonishing (to me anyway) amount of negativity from fans and the media, despite the team performing better than they ever have in the URC. And yes, I know. They have all the Springboks. We expect them to win everything with the calibre of talent they have available to them. I’ve written before about why having a wealth of Springboks at your disposal isn’t always the cure all people assume it is, so I’m not going to get into that again. We do have justifiably high expectations of this team, but what I found so fascinating as the season progressed was the way people were talking about their performances. Anyone who didn’t know better would be forgiven for thinking the Sharks were losing most, if not all, of their games, such was the level of negativity and criticism. Now, humans are psychologically predisposed to focus more on negative information, rather than on the positives, a phenomenon known as negativity bias, and we're definitely seeing that in action with a lot of the discourse around the Sharks. It also makes an interesting case for confirmation bias – we only see the things that confirm what we already believe. So, for whatever reason, if people have decided that the Sharks were performing poorly, all they could see was the mistakes the team might have been making on the field, and the games that weren’t always characterised by flair. What they seemed unable to see was the results. However the team was playing, they were still winning way more than they were losing. You know who else was accused, once upon a time, of playing a brand of rugby no one wanted to watch, despite the fact that they were winning? The Springboks, back when Rassie first took over. That has evolved now, and perhaps things will change for the Sharks too.

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But let’s go back a step and take a look at their performance over the four URC seasons. Despite all the negativity and gnashing of teeth, 2024/2025 was, overall, their best season yet. And not just compared to last season, which was indisputably disastrous (although they went on to win the Challenge Cup and the Currie Cup in 2024, so….perhaps not quite that disastrous after all, but let’s stick to the URC for now).

They achieved their highest log position at the end of the regular season,  won the South African Shield, secured a home quarter-final, and made it to the semi-finals for the first time. None of those are achievements that any fan would ordinarily sniff at. Admittedly, it’s a slightly less rosy picture when we look at the number of points scored during the regular season, which has gone down when compared to 2021/22 and 2022/23. On the other hand, the only time they allowed fewer points to be scored against them was during the 2021/22 regular season, with this year being a marked improvement on 2022/23 and 2023/24.

A couple of things really stand out for me when I look at these numbers from a bigger picture perspective. I see a team that was already starting to struggle in 2022/23, and reached their rock bottom (hopefully) the next season. I also see a team that may not have racked up endless points this season, but that had the tenacity and belief to find a way to win no matter what. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s almost more important than scoring tries because playing style can be coached, but attitude is harder to fix, and it’s what gets teams over the line in the toughest moments.

Now, did that attitude serve them perfectly every time this season? No, obviously not, or they’d be celebrating instead of Leinster. Things fell apart a little in that semi. After beating the Bulls twice this season, the third, and most important, time was just a bridge too far. It’s ironic, in a way, that they won the quarter-final against Munster off the back of a kicking contest, and then missed four out of five kicks at goal during the semi-final against the Bulls. There is a little part of me that wonders how they would have handled the final against Leinster, had that semi-final gone the other way. Because if there’s one thing the Bulls didn’t appear to bring to Dublin, it was belief.

Of course, we’ll never know if the Sharks would have found a way to turn it on for that game, as they did so many other times this season, and arguably the two teams who had performed the best throughout the season made the final. I’m okay with where the Sharks ended this URC. Their trajectory is heading in the right direction, and I think next year we’ll see even more from them. I’m not suggesting there isn’t work to be done to improve the performance of a team that’s laden with internationals. All I’m saying is that maybe we just need to take a step back from time to time and get a little perspective. Things may not be as negative as we think they are. Try not to get dragged down.