{"id":12183,"date":"2012-07-07T00:16:16","date_gmt":"2012-07-06T22:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/07\/rugby-sharks-beat-bulls-to-keep-playoff-hopes-alive\/"},"modified":"2012-07-07T00:16:16","modified_gmt":"2012-07-06T22:16:16","slug":"rugby-sharks-beat-bulls-to-keep-playoff-hopes-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/rugby-sharks-beat-bulls-to-keep-playoff-hopes-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"Rugby-Sharks beat Bulls to keep playoff hopes alive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">DURBAN, July 6<\/span> (Reuters) &#8211; The Sharks kept their Super Rugby<br \/>\nplayoff hopes alive with a 32-10 drubbing of the Bulls in their<br \/>\nSouth African derby at Kings Park on Friday.<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The bonus-point win lifted the hosts to sixth in the<br \/>\nstandings with one round left. The top six contest the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Sharks had not played a competitive match since June 2,<br \/>\nwhen Super Rugby went in to a three-week break during the<br \/>\ninternational season, but showed no sign of rustiness and ran<br \/>\nthe ball whenever they could to chalk up four tries in front of<br \/>\na 29,515 crowd.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201c&#8221;I&#8217;m proud of the way we played,&#8221; said captain Keegan<br \/>\nDaniel. &#8220;\u201cWe knew we had to stop their lineout drives and we did<br \/>\nwell to kill their ball at source.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Sharks took the lead in the 12th minute when burly<br \/>\nhooker Bismarck du Plessis forced his way over for a converted<br \/>\ntry after a bulldozing run.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Pretoria-based Bulls hit back with a penalty from<br \/>\nflyhalf Morne Steyn before Sharks centre Frans Steyn restored<br \/>\nthe home team&#8217;s seven-point buffer with a massive 54-metre<br \/>\npenalty.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Sharks grabbed their second try in the 26th minute when<br \/>\nwing JP Pietersen darted over in the right-hand corner for a<br \/>\nconverted score.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Flyhalf Frederic Michalak then kicked a penalty to hand the<br \/>\nhome team a commanding 20-3 lead at halftime.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The second period began as the first had started for the<br \/>\nSharks and after four minutes forward Daniel spun his way out of<br \/>\na tackle to crash over in the left-hand corner.<br \/>\n\u00a0 <span class=\"label\"><strong>Continued&#8230;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DURBAN, July 6 (Reuters) &#8211; The Sharks kept their Super Rugby playoff hopes alive with a 32-10 drubbing of the Bulls in their South African derby at Kings Park on Friday. The bonus-point win lifted the hosts to sixth in the standings with one round left. The top six contest the playoffs. The Sharks had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-12183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}