Brumbies coach Stephen Larkham is keeping things real after another tight loss.
Larkham said he wasn’t scouring for the positives out of a last-gasp 27-22 loss to the Sharks, a result that followed a four-point defeat in Christchurch in the opening round.
“We’re not looking for positives, we’re looking for realism and we don’t like losing and we’re not a team that loses traditionally,” he said.
“We’ve got to be better in the last 10, 15, five minutes of a game.”
That the Brumbies had the chance to snatch the win in the dying seconds before the Sharks took their only opportunity rubbed salt into the wound, Larkham said.
“They did exactly what we were trying to do so that one hurts a little bit more.
“They got the turnover and scored a try. We were trying to score a try at the end of the game, at least try and get a penalty and get three points but it just didn’t eventuate for us.
“A lot of the guys will probably put their hand up and say if I’d done that differently, the result might have been different.
“I think the hardest thing is we had good support here tonight and we didn’t get the win.” - Stephen Larkham
Discipline was the downfall for the Brumbies, with Pat Lambie making them pay in front of the posts, though they only conceded 11 penalties to the Sharks’ 10.
Larkham expressed his frustrations over the calls, particularly a string of infringements in the second half that the Sharks used to get on the front foot.
“It was tough tonight, we couldn’t buy a penalty,” he said.
“Carts (Co-captain Sam Carter) got penalised for being 10 centimetres offside at a ruck which is pretty hard to swallow.
“We gave up five penalties in a row in that second half, we couldn’t get any possession passage happening in that second half “
Carter said there was a simple lesson out of the damage Lambie was able to inflict.
“We just need to be more disciplined in our own half because if we’re going to give a South African team with a kicker like Lambie that many opportunities at goal it’s going to hurt us every time.
“We can’t be doing that, we need to fix our discipline.”
The Brumbies host the Force next Friday night, kicking off at 7:45pm AEDT.
