Sharks team to tackle the Blues

Apr 14 • General News, Super Rugby • 1239 Views • Comments Off on Sharks team to tackle the Blues

The Cell C Sharks face a tough, yet exciting, challenge on their opening assignment of their Vodacom Super Rugby tour when they face the Blues in Auckland on Saturday morning.

Getting the tour off to a good start is high up on the list of desires, and not only in terms of success but also in the performance they are able to deliver.

For Cell C Sharks coach Gary Gold who has made three changes to last week’s team, the set-piece and their discipline are two areas they will look to be accurate in this week.

“It’s vital for us it to try get some parity at scrum times,” he admitted. “It’s really important from that point of view to give ourselves enough opportunity to be able to launch attacks against them. We need to be a lot neater and accurate at set-piece time, we need to get a lot more set-piece ball.

“And we’ve spoken long and hard about our discipline, we can’t give penalties away.”

With Marcell Coetzee unfortunately out for the season with an ACL injury (knee ligaments), his place amongst the loose forwards is taken by Philip van der Walt who returns from injury. Other changes see Coenie Oosthuizen make way for Lourens Adriaanse and Stephan Lewies returning after being a late withdrawal last week.

Gold warns of the dangers posed by the three time champions (1996, 1997 and 2003), explaining that, “They have some massive ball carriers up front, a good set-piece and some electric backs who are renowned steppers who use the width of the field very well.

“They will pose a massive challenge for us and we’ll have to have our wits about us to be able to deal with their attacking game.”

The Cell C Sharks

15. Willie Le Roux	Replacements:
14. JP Pietersen	16. Kyle Cooper
13. Paul Jordaan	17. Thomas du Toit
12. Andre Esterhuizen	18. Coenie Oosthuizen
11. Lwazi Mvovo	19. Hyron Andrews
10. Joe Pietersen	20. Keegan Daniel
9. Cobus Reinach	21. Michael Claassens
8. Philip van der Walt	22. Garth April
7. Jean-Luc du Preez	23. Odwa Ndungane
6. Daniel du Preez
5. Stephan Lewies
4. Etienne Oosthuizen
3. Lourens Adriaanse
2. Franco Marais
1. Tendai Mtawarira (Captain)