Assistant coach Dick Muir says the Sharks’ playoff hopes are once again out of their hands after losing to the Stormers on Saturday.

With the Reds beating the Rebels on Friday, the Sharks had a glorious opportunity to climb above the Melbourne-based team into the final wildcard position on the log. However, the KwaZulu-Natalians’ inconsistent character showed itself again as they were outplayed by a physical Stormers team.

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Muir said they are now hoping that results once again go their way.

‘We did shoot ourselves in the foot a bit as our destiny was in our own hands and now it is not,’ Muir said. ‘Maybe we can still get through but we have work to do and the way I see it, we need to bank on beating the Jaguares with a bonus point.’

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Muir admitted that inconsistency has been a problem for the Sharks all season.

‘We have one good game and then one bad one, we have one good half and then a bad half … We went alright up front [against the Stormers], it was just a combination of errors that let us down.

‘There were 14 handling errors, which was uncharacteristic for us. We had no real front-foot ball and the Stormers deserve credit for defending really well.

‘We felt there were areas in the Stormers game that we could exploit. It didn’t work and maybe that contributed to us not getting enough momentum … Maybe we should instead have been a little more direct.

‘We knew the Stormers had nothing to lose and if you fall behind in a game where you are not playing for anything, sometimes it is hard to respond to the pressure. But they were up for it and instead of us putting them under pressure, it was they who put us under pressure and we didn’t respond as well as we should have.’

Photo: Ashley Vlotman/Gallo Images