Sharks captain Siya Kolisi and his teammates must stop the winning momentum of Edinburgh as they look to make it three wins from three matches against South African opposition.
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The Sharks must stop Edinburgh by any means necessary to complete a clean sweep in their so-called “Biltong Series” against the South African sides.
Over the last two weekends, the Scottish club ,with their SA flavour, ended the campaigns of the Bulls and Lions in the EPCR Challenge Cup with wins at the Hive Stadium. They’ve won two of the three clashes against the SA franchises, and now the Durbanites stand between them and a 3-0 feat. They have made their home ground a fortress against the South Africans this season.
It’s a different competition, the United Rugby Championship (URC) but Edinburgh will have the same objectives when they face a Springbok-laden Sharks on Friday evening (8.35pm kick-off) in the Scottish capital.
How they’ve dealt with the Bulls, who also had a host of Boks in their match-day squad, will have given the Sean Everitt-coached side plenty of confidence ahead of the battle with his former team. Everitt was the Sharks’ mentor before moving to the Bulls after which he left for Scotland.
“We’ve got three South African teams in a row and the guys are labelling it the Biltong Series,” Everitt said, in his press conference after the win over the Bulls. “We’re two up and we’ve got another one to go, so we’ve got to focus on the Sharks match.”
Edinburgh sit in eighth place (36 points) and the last knockout spot, ahead of the Stormers (35 points in 10th) and Lions (30 in 13th), so not only must the Sharks look to make a dent in Edinburgh’s chances of making it 3-0 in the “Biltong Series”, but they can also do their fellow franchises a favour by knocking over the Scots.
If they can do that, the Stormers have a big chance of ending the weekend in the top eight should they beat Connacht, while the Lions facing Benetton can also take a step closer to Edinburgh with a victory in Johannesburg.
The Sharks have their top players back for the two-week tour in Europe and it will be a massive boost in matches they must win to stay amongst the top four teams in the URC.
They are still in the running to host one of the quarter-finals and can still end in the top three should they win all four of their last round-robin matches.
