Curwin Bosch comes clean on struggles, lessons learned at the Sharks

Bosch, who had his chance in green and gold back in 2017 as a 20-year-old, failed to kick on from there and fell into a bad patch of form earlier this season which led to him to being replaced by Siya Masuku, who ultimately triggered a revival in Durban.

The playmaker has since said goodbye to the Sharks after 110 appearances and will join Pro D2 club Brive in France next season, where he could line up alongside England great Courtney Lawes.

The 26-year-old joined former Springboks Juan de Jongh and Rudy Paige on their podcast Behind the Ruck and delivered an honest assessment of where it all went wrong.

Bosch revealed that he ended up over-obsessing about the finer details while playing fly-half, leading to what he described as a "spiral".

"I haven't been playing my best rugby the last couple of seasons, but I'm just looking forward to [joining Brive]," he told Behind the Ruck.

"In the most simple way I [can put it]... obviously the rugby played in the northern hemisphere there's a lot of structure, a lot of detail, a lot of gameplan, which I enjoy.

"But you can get sucked into just focusing on that and forgetting to do what you do best, and for me that's seeing space and playing the space.

"I've just fallen into the trap of over-analysing my own game, over-analysing the opposition, and then you come on a Saturday and you've got all these things in your mind ⦠but the space is the most obvious thing you need to look for.

"I've got a very obsessive personality and once I get into something and start analysing I go into this spiral of over-analysing and all that sort of nonsense."

Bosch has been between fly-half and full-back during his career. He made a comparison between the two positions and what they require while also admitting he was guilty of being too hard on himself.

"The last three seasons I've played a handful of games at 15 and I think every now and again it's good," Bosch added.

"At 10 you're in the action all the time, at 15 you have a bit more space, a bit more time to make decisions and there's no real structure to a 15's play. A ball gets kicked to you and you need to find the space.

"If I probably had a bit more time at 15 these last three seasons it would've freed me up a little bit but in saying that, a couple of years ago when I was playing 15 all I wanted to do was play flyhalf!

"I've learnt a lot about myself these last three years, not to be so hard on myself. I definitely put a lot of pressure on myself and it's probably the reason why [I struggled]; you start tensing up and looking for perfection instead of just progress."

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