When the Hollywoodbets Sharks beat Edinburgh in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship a week and a half ago they left a lot of points on the table and should arguably have won by a lot more than they did but perhaps that will turn out to be a good thing for them.
As it turns out, the same Edinburgh team that lost 23-13 at Hollywoodbets Kings Park on Easter Saturday are heading back to Durban for what for the Sharks is a crucial and all-or-nothing EPCR Challenge Cup quarterfinal at the weekend (Saturday, kick-off 13.30).
Well, let’s correct that, it is not quite the same Edinburgh team. As the influential Sharks hooker Bongi Mbonambi noted this week, the Edinburgh team that played last time was a bit under-strength, something they are unlikely to be for a knock-out game.
“The fact that it’s a quarterfinal and a whole different competition makes it even more difficult. We know they’ll come here even better prepared than before,” said the Springbok double World Cup winner.
“We noticed last time that they were missing a couple of their key players, and had just come back from playing Six Nations. They’ll definitely be fresh and more challenging this time around. Especially with a coach like Sean Everitt (former Sharks coach), he knows how to prepare a team and bring them down here to Durban. They’re definitely going to come back stronger.”
That’s why it might be good for the Sharks that they didn’t run away with the URC game like they could have, and were instead kept to just a 10 point winning margin. There’s a bit of historic precedence to draw on in explaining why that is the case - last year the Sharks put 50 points past Munster in a Champions Cup round of 16 match, only to be held to a draw when the same team returned to Durban for a URC game a few weeks later.
That draw was an important result for Munster on their road to the URC title, and a massive calamity for the Sharks, as it is what prevented them from getting into this season’s Champions Cup. And missing out on the more elite of the two European competitions has hurt the Sharks, which is why getting through Saturday’s obstacle is so important - the Sharks can’t make it into the Champions Cup by finishing in the top eight of the URC, they need to win the Challenge Cup.
Winning the secondary competition is a realistic goal for the Sharks, who will have to play away after this round, with the final set for Tottenham Hotspur Stadium the night before the Champions Cup final at the end of May. They’ve started to pick up some good momentum in the last few weeks, starting with the important win over Ulster, and the return of the Springboks has galvanised some of the youngsters playing around them.
“It was a tough start for us and everyone at the Sharks rugby union knows that, and definitely not the start that we were looking for but we had a lot of young players coming in and getting opportunities to play,” Mbonambi said.
“It’s the role of every union to get their players into the senior setup as soon as possible, to get them playing URC games, to get them playing knockout games. The more depth you have in these competitions the better you’ll do, especially looking at the Champions Cup. We’re all aiming for that but to get there you need a lot of depth.
“The way the Sharks are going about it, making sure they play those junior players and expose them… you only get better once you play those big games. I’m very happy to see young guys like Ethan Hooker and Corne Rahl putting up their hands because at the end of the day, some of us aren’t going to play rugby for very long.”