Bulls clash will provide proper measurement of Sharks’ progress

The Hollywoodbets Sharks players and no doubt coaches too will be forgiven if they climbed onto their flight home a bit bleary eyed and hungover after they made history on Friday night so it’s a good thing for them that they have an eight day turnaround before their next mission.

The 36-22 win over Gloucester in the EPCR Challenge Cup final at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium allowed the Sharks to make up for their failure to reach the much more prestigious higher echelon Investec Champions Cup by finishing in the top half of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship.

For them, it wasn’t just their first silverware since the 2018 Currie Cup and their maiden win in an international franchise/club competition, it was also akin to winning a promotion-relegation game.

What was at stake was not quite akin in financial terms to what is regarded as the most lucrative single game in England football, meaning the Championship Playoff Final that saw Southampton beat Leeds United 1-0 on Sunday to book their return to the Premier League, but in terms of prestige and importance it was.

The Sharks couldn’t spend another season hosting the calibre of opponent presented in the secondary Challenge Cup. The star studded quality in their team requires them to be playing more challenging opponents, and in that sense Friday’s game was one of the most important they have played.

GOOD STEPPING STONE TO MORE PRESTIGIOUS FINALS

In terms of getting themselves the experience required to win future more elite finals, it was a good stepping stone for them. They played perfect finals rugby, with their anticipated forward domination supplemented by a strong kicking game. They suffocated Gloucester at source, played the game in the right areas of the field and built scoreboard pressure.

Talking of pressure, while they were only playing the ninth best team in England, who only finished ahead of winless Newcastle Falcons in the Gallagher Premiership, there is always pressure in a final. The Sharks handled that well too. The result should have been anticipated, as the Sharks are a much better team than their 13th position on the URC log indicates, while Gloucester, both on the team sheet and on the field, are every bit the mediocre team their ranking in England suggests they are.

But you still have to execute, and the Sharks did that superbly. They gave an indication that their culture has come right when they fought back to beat Clermont-Auvergne, by far the strongest opponents they played in the Challenge Cup, in the semifinal three weeks earlier.

MASUKU HAS MADE THE DIFFERENCE

What has also come right is their game, and it’s not hard to pinpoint the main ingredient that facilitated the change of fortunes - Siya Masuku. You can have as star studded a team as you like but you will fail if you don’t have a decent game driving flyhalf and a good culture.

Masuku has brought that second ingredient, with the Sharks already looking perceptibly more potent on attack when the former Cheetahs No 10 was first introduced in the second half of a losing cause in the URC derby against the Stormers in Durban on 17 February.

The Sharks lost their next game when they went understrength to Johannesburg but Masuku showed his promise there, and since then he hasn’t looked back. And while there have been three losses since then, all of them understandable if you look at the fine print of those games, the Sharks’ full strength side hasn’t looked back.

Having Masuku running the show at No 10 means the Sharks operate closer to the gainline than they did when Curwin Bosch was at flyhalf and he brings the players around him into the game more. It leads to a more fluid and multi-dimensional attacking game, and there is no denying that the Sharks now are a different animal to what they were a few months ago.

THEY NEED TO WIN AGAINST A BIG TEAM

But while it does appear the Durbanites have turned a corner, their first win in that turnaround, against Ulster just before Easter has been the only one against a side that belongs in the top six of its league. Even Clermont were lower than eighth in the Top 14 in France when they played the semifinal, and the Gloucester team the Sharks beat in the final lost nine games in a row in the Premiership earlier this season and were thumped 90-0 when admittedly fielding a changed up team a few weeks ago.

The achievement of winning the Challenge Cup was what it got the Sharks - qualification for the Champions Cup, Winning the competition should have been an expectation from the outset given the quality in the Sharks team compared to the other sides, with the competition effectively being between teams who did not finish in the top eight of their leagues.

The Sharks are better than that, and John Plumtree and his coaching staff and Eben Etzebeth, the captain on the night of the final, and the rest of the players will know that the trophy they won earns them something of a reprieve rather than turns the 2023/2024 season into a successful one for them. They’d be doing themselves a massive disservice if they thought that, for they are not a team that should be losing 13 URC games, which is their record in their primary competition at this point.

Now that they have made it into the Champions Cup, they also won’t have the Challenge Cup as a safety net as qualification for the following season like they did this time around. Unless they win the Champions Cup, they will have to make it into the following edition of the elite competition by finishing at least seventh in the URC.

DERBIES MEAN A LOT TO SUPPORTERS

That’s long since been beyond them but they do have one final game to play in the URC and it is a perfect opportunity for them to confirm the progress they have made and take some momentum into next season as it is against the top performing South African team in the competition this year, the Vodacom Bulls.

The Pretoria side are currently second on the log and playing for top spot so a win at Hollywoodbets Kings Park will provide the confirmation of improvement that, frankly, a win over Gloucester or any other team in the Challenge Cup can’t do.

This is the final game of the season for the Sharks, so they can give it everything and leave nothing out there, while the Bulls will know they have a very important sequence of playoff games in their future. It is all set for the Sharks to go out and try and finish with a flourish, and prove that they can compete with the big boys.

They haven’t won a derby game this season and should want to start next season with the monkey having been removed from their back. Derbies matter a lot to their fans too, so they need to win, or at least put on a really good performance, or a lot of the gloss from the Challenge Cup win will be taken off that achievement.

It makes for a compelling final game of what has been, with the exception of adding the Challenge Cup to their trophy cabinet, a trying season for the Sharks. They are a much better team than 13th and now is their chance to prove it and create the confidence for a proper challenge across both competitions in 2024/2025.