Under normal circumstances, February would be a little bit too early for the Bayside Sharks to find themselves in “must-win” territory.
However, that’s exactly the spot the men’s premier rugby side finds itself after a 20-13 loss to Meralomas Saturday afternoon at South Surrey Athletic Park.
The loss leaves the Sharks at 1-2 on the season, and they will need to win their next two games – on the road against Burnaby this Saturday, and at home versus the Castaway Wanderers March 5 – in order to finish in the top eight, thus avoiding relegation into the first division for the last month of the season.
“Normally, you wouldn’t have these types of must-win games this early in the year, but with the new format, that’s what we are faced with,” said Sharks coach David Benoit.
“We’re a top seven, top eight team – we just haven’t put together 80 minutes of rugby yet.”
Heading into the season, Benoit said his team needed to focus less on offence – which has rarely been a problem for the premier side – and more on tightening up defensively.
And while the team’s defence has been much improved through the first three games of the season, the offence has all but dried up.
Isimeli Sigarua scored the team’s lone try against Meralomas, and Peter Clifford tacked on a conversion and penalty kick.
The game was scoreless at halftime, and the Sharks trailed just 13-10 with 10 minutes left in the game, but could not mount a strong enough comeback to earn the victory.
“Meralomas is a very good team – they’ve been in the provincial finals three of the last four years – but we just lost our composure in the last 10 minutes,” said Benoit. “We kicked away some possessions, we had a try called back – we had it right there for the taking, and didn’t get it done.
“Defensively, we’re solid, but we’re just not scoring the points we’re used to scoring. We’ve got to get back to that.”
In the Sharks’ last game two weeks ago – a 16-10 loss to Capilano – Benoit was also left wondering what happened to his team’s offence.
“We could’ve won both our last two games, and very easily we could be sitting at 3-0 right now, with a lot less to worry about,” he said.
“We’ve played pretty well in those games, but with this new format, there’s no time for moral victories – we need to win.”