The Cell C Sharks are the South African team under the most pressure going into the final round of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship and a lot depends both on the Munster attitude and what their opponents learned from their last visit to Durban.
The Sharks need to win on Saturday evening, and nothing less than that will suffice, if they are to extricate themselves from their current eighth position on the URC log. They need to finish seventh if they are going to qualify for next year’s Heineken Champions Cup, which is the competition the Sharks’ American equity partners have set their hearts on winning.
On the face of it, the Sharks will start as strong favourites at HollywoodBets Kings Park. They put 50 points past Munster when the Irish team visited for the Champions Cup round of 16 tie three weeks ago, and the 35 points scored by the visitors mostly came in a late flurry when the game was already won and lost.
ONE OF SHARKS’ FINEST PERFORMANCES
Their win over Munster was one of the Sharks’ finest performances of the season and if they replicate that they should score the win that will lift them into the European qualification bracket and they could finish as high as sixth if the Vodacom Bulls (who host Leinster) and Connacht (who play away to Glasgow Warriors) don’t win on the final weekend and they do.
If the status quo remains as it is, meaning the Stormers finish third behind Ulster, that will set the Sharks up for a trip to Cape Town for their quarterfinal, which will be a tough ask but arguably an easier one because of the lesser travel demand than going to Ulster (or Leinster) for the first match of the Finals Series.
The Sharks did what they had to do last week against Benetton in a game where they didn’t fire on all cylinders, which was probably a legacy of the travel they have been putting in over the past few weeks to satisfy the dual demands of their URC and Champions Cup ambitions. They should be a lot better on Saturday, but a lot might depend on the Munster attitude.
The chances of Munster cutting the lead Glasgow Warriors have on them in fourth place are minimal if not unrealistic, and they effectively need one bonus point to make sure of fifth place. They can still be caught by both the Bulls and Connacht.
MUNSTER STILL NEED A POINT TO CLINCH FIFTH
The need for that solitary point is probably an insurance against Munster going into the game with a weakened team or with less commitment than what they tackled the Stormers with last week, but you do still have to question whether Munster can replicate the high intensity and physicality of their effort at the DHL Stadium.
They had to dig deep to win a game that the Stormers, although not quite on song in all aspects of their game, would still have won had Manie Libbok been even half decent with his efforts from the kicking tee. In particular, the 20 minute middle period of the game where they looked out on their feet but hung on bravely should have taken something out of them.
But then Graham Rowntree, the Munster coach, also said something interesting when he spoke after the Stormers game about the reason his team were so much improved on their recent visit to Durban in the Champions Cup: “We learned a lot about what it takes to play against South African teams from that game against the Sharks.”
ETZEBETH WILL BE MISSED WHILE RG SHOULD BE BETTER
If that is the case, there are a few key elements that could point to a much closer game this time around. The main one being that while Eben Etzebeth didn’t play the full game last time - he was injured in the first half and did not come out for the second - this time he will be missing for the entire game.
Etzebeth has very much become a Sharks talisman, while conversely RG Snyman, Etzebeth’s Springbok lock teammate, is quickly starting to become that for Munster after coming back from a long injury layoff. Against the Stormers, Snyman looked like he was gaining momentum and was back to being his old influential self.
He did look like he’d sustained concussion late in the Stormers game, but if he plays, he will be an improved player just because of the extra game time he has had since the last time he was in Durban. And Jean Kleyn, the other South African in the Munster second row, was as good as his countryman against the Stormers.
VISITORS HAVE HAD TIME FOR WORK-ONS
While the Sharks have been playing every week over the past month, and traveling too, thus putting themselves in the same category as the Stormers in the sense that truncated training weeks limit the chance to pay attention to detail, Munster did have a week off after the last Sharks game due to not making the Champions Cup quarters.
They would have worked hard during that fortnight on the shortcomings that were exposed by the Sharks. The Stormers expected a strong mauling game from their opponents, but it exceeded what was expected and it was the two maul tries scored by the visitors in the first half that put them on the path to victory.
The Sharks also arguably have an inferior defensive system to the Stormers and there were occasions in the previous game that Munster exposed that. So in the end, while we can probably expect the Sharks to have their intensity back, much could depend on Saturday on how much Munster want it. If they want to win as much as they did against the Stormers, it could be a similar outcome, with the winners getting home by a small margin. A draw is unlikely to help the Sharks, so they do need to win. Kings Park might not be the place to be for Sharks supporters with dickey hearts.