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Thomas’s return a timely lift for Sharks on two fronts

rugby24 November 2020 07:37| © SuperSport
By:Gavin Rich
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Thomas du Toit © Getty Images

The return to fitness and anticipated availability to play of Springbok prop Thomas du Toit is a timely boost for the Cell C Sharks in more ways than one.

It was ostensibly because they were short of tightheads that the Sharks had to take the step last week of cancelling their scheduled final Vodacom Super Rugby Unlocked game against the DHL Stormers at Jonsson King’s Park. Du Toit is back in the frame and ready to play, plus he has been playing tighthead all year. So that’s one box ticked.

The other box that will be ticked by the big forward’s return from an injury he sustained early in the Lockdown season that began South African rugby’s return to play is the addition of some much-needed meat and physicality to their forward effort. While in the early part of the year, before the lockdown because of the coronavirus, the Sharks were able to do quite well in hiding the fact they lost an enormous amount of forward depth since the end of last year, since rugby’s return they have struggled.

They did very well to set themselves right in the game against the Phakisa Pumas in Nelspruit the week after a humbling defeat in Pretoria where the soft underbelly of their forward play was cruelly exposed, generally they have struggled to get it going up front.

After struggling against the Tafel Lager Griquas and being lucky to scrape home with a win, they would have been fearing the worst from the cancelled game against the Stormers, who have rectified their own struggles up front since they went to Loftus and also received a drubbing a week after the Sharks travelled there.

Du Toit, if as expected he is back in the starting team, will add considerable experience and substance to the pack, and could just be the catalyst for turning around the coastal franchise’s fortunes when it comes to the forward battle.

But with the Covid-19 outbreak that prompted the cancellation of the Stormers game - the Sharks did say then that they were erring on the side of caution - still very much part of the Sharks’ world at the moment, Friday night’s first Carling Lager Currie Cup game against the Pumas could be a testing one.

Sharks CEO Eduard Coetzee has told the Durban media that while the return to fitness of Du Toit means there is no reason why the game can’t go ahead, there will be at least 10 players who are being quarantined and will therefore be ruled out of Friday’s game.

“We were able to get the squad tested on Sunday and while we have no new cases, we are still without the 10 players from last week,” said Coetzee.

“You will see when the team is announced that we are heavily hit at tighthead prop and at loose-forward but we must make a plan and carry on. We must play. We can’t afford to lose more points on the log.”

Reading between the lines, the Sharks will be fielding a considerably rejigged team against the Pumas, with several fringe players coming into the mix. That could make them vulnerable against a Pumas team that had its own Covid problems and was outplayed in the first half of the final Unlocked game at Loftus before coming back well in the second half.

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