Gold calls for better ball security

The loss was the Sharks' third in row - they went down to the Lions and Crusaders in Durban before they went on tour.

"It was incredibly frustrating, particularly on the basis of how well we done in the first half," said Gold.

"I thought we defended well against a team who attacked a lot against us. But we don't want to defend all night long."

Gold added: "Through our own doing we were not able to secure possession.

"I think we were just letting the Blues back into the game and we gave them the momentum in the second half. They took their chances well and they asked a lot of questions of us."

Gold pinpointed a few areas where his team were guilty of relinquishing possession to their opponents.

"It was a simple situation of a little bit of poor discipline creeping in at the end. 

"When the rare occasion did arrive where we could have built some pressure, we lost our set piece - our line-out particularly," he added.

Gold believes the problems that plagued them against the Blues are ones that can be easily fixed ahead of their meeting with defending Super Rugby champions, the Highlanders, on Friday,

"It is easy to fix. We generally have a pretty good line-out. From a discipline point of view, when you defending for such long periods of time, you will tend to make errors and we got to be hard on ourselves and make sure it does not happen again," said Gold.

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