Rugby is a team game and assembling a side of superstar players does not lead to success if the different components don’t gel into a unit, as the Hollywoodbets Sharks discovered when they played Ulster after just three days of training in the Vodacom URC last week.
It was noticeable that the longer that game lasted the Sharks started to stabilise and combine better, and had it not been for the silly yellow cards, one of which turned Into a red, picked up by two Springboks, the Durbanites may well have turned around their 17-0 deficit at the end of the third quarter. In the end, they lost 34-26.
One of the players who seemed particularly inspired to almost take it in his own hands to turn the momentum was Andre Esterhuizen, who has been a valuable acquisition to the Sharks since returning from his stint in Ulster.
There is a lot of talk about the Sharks having too many Boks, and it is true in the sense that it means coach John Plumtree never has a pre-season with his team, but Esterhuizen, like Edwill van der Merwe, has proved a shrewd buy.
Having spent most of his early senior career at the Sharks, he does appear to be a player who’s heart bleeds for the team, so it was unsurprising to hear him effectively responding to a meeting held on Monday, where senior players Siya Kolisi and Eben Etzebeth are understood to have made an impassioned plea to their teammates, in kind via an audio issued to the media.
Discipline > Motivation.@vodacom #URC pic.twitter.com/n0Hrfv6SaG
— The Sharks (@SharksRugby) October 22, 2025
Kolisi and Etzebeth, noting the pressure that their coach John Plumtree has come under because of the perception that a star studded team should always get a big result regardless of the circumstances, apparently called for team work - and the big centre, Esternhuizen, echoed that call.
“It’s been a tough week. Last week we wanted it badly, but I don’t think we were aggressive enough. We made a lot of individual errors, which obviously affects the team,” said Esterhuizen.
“But the boys have responded well. We had some hard meetings on Monday and took a hard look at ourselves. We can’t change what’s happened, so the focus is on the next game before the big break in the URC for the international window.
“The key message [this week] is just everyone getting on the same page so that we can play to the level we know we can. There’s no use having a superstar team if we don’t play like one. Everything revolves around playing as a team. We need to stick together whether things go well or badly. That’s what team sport is about.”
The Sharks will have a good chance to register their first win of their campaign, and pick up full points in the process, when they play the Scarlets at Hollywoodbets Kings Park on Saturday. However, while the Scarlets currently foot the log, and were hammered 34-0 by the DHL Stormers two weeks ago, the Sharks won’t have forgotten how tight it was when the two teams met in Durban in a key fixture last season.
That was a different Scarlets team then, they were playing for a place in the playoffs and achieved that, subsequent to which they’ve been severely weakened by injuries.
Yet the memory of that evening game, where dew rendered the ball slippery and neither side could get their attack going, has not faded for the Sharks, which means there shouldn’t be any complacency. Not that there would be after the week the players have had, with sources around the camp indicating that there has been a passionate response to the Kolisi/Etzebeth meeting on Monday.
“Every time we’ve played the Scarlets, they’ve made the game quite messy,” said Esterhuizen. “They like it loose and they love playing off turnovers. Last season when we played them here, it was a messy game with lots of broken play and turnovers.
"We’re expecting a hard physical battle. They’ve also got flair, they play attacking, running rugby. We just need to counter that and play to our strengths.”
The Sharks team for Saturday’s game will be announced later on Thursday.