Sharks coach John Plumtree battled to take any positives from his side's disappointing performance against the Leopards on Friday night and admitted to being 'frustrated' with his team.

The Sharks missed an opportunity to put some extra pressure on the table-topping Lions, who suffered their first defeat of the season at Newlands on Friday, by only scoring three tries at home and missing out on the bonus point against the Leopards.

Plumtree highlighted a lack of composure as the main cause of his team's inability to penetrate the Leopards defence often enough.

He said: "It was a frustrating affair for everyone, we were impatient in the first half, our 9 and 10 couldn't get our game going and we were too lateral against their drift defence.

"When we got some momentum and got going, we just didn't finish the opportunities that we created. The whole game was pretty much dominated by reset scrums and it was slow," added the Sharks boss.

Plumtree was not happy with the lack of intensity from his team whose only loss this season has come against another small union - the Griquas.

"It's hard to come away with any positives when you get a performance like that really, we've been poor against the minor unions and I'm not sure if that's mental or not, certainly you have got to be careful," he said:

Despite being critical of his team Plumtree did acknowledge that the Leopards had done well to make things so difficult for his side at Kings Park.

He said: "You have to hand it to them, they defended well, when we got behind them, they scrambled well. They clearly came here wanting to prove a point.

"Against the big teams this year, they've been pretty competitive, good on them. We weren't accurate enough to put up a big score," explained Plumtree.

The Sharks' Kiwi mentor lamented the stop-start nature of the game which prevented his team from getting any proper momentum going and he explained that they were happy to put the scrappy performance behind them and move on as quickly as possible.

He said: "There was a fair bit going in at the breakdown, we will have to look on the video, there was just no flow in the match, they didn't look like would score a try, our defence was pretty good most of the time, but really, we wanted to get the bonus point, we had an opportunity but for a skew throw in at the lineout.

"We wanted to play an up-tempo game but just couldn't get it going. It was one of those nights you want to just put a line through. Just a night you want to take the points and move on," commented Plumtree.