Ken Borland

The Sharks were back at training at Kings Park on Monday, savouring their convincing 27-10 win over the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein, but a far bigger challenge lies ahead this weekend when they take on the Chiefs, who were impressive in beating the Stormers 28-19 in Cape Town.

A backline featuring Sonny Bill Williams, Aaron Cruden and Tim Nanai-Williams is enough to turn defenders’ legs to jelly and Sharks assistant coach Sean Everitt was not sugar-coating the challenge on Monday.

“We are much happier after this past weekend, we haven’t performed quite as well as we’d wanted to, but going to Bloemfontein is never easy, so it was great to come back with a bonus-point win.

“But the Chiefs backline can score a lot of tries and the most important thing for us is to prevent them from attacking from turnovers, that’s when they can be really dangerous. The names say it all, Aaron Cruden, Sonny Bill Williams and the likes,” Everitt warned.

As the Chiefs showed against the Stormers, scoring from poorly-directed or inadequately-chased kicks is meat and drink for them, but Everitt said kicking would still be an important part of the Sharks’ game-plan.

“I think if you look at the stats, teams are losing games when they are playing too much rugby in their own half and not in the right areas of the field. So we want to get that right and ensure we take our opportunities when they arise.

“Against the Cheetahs, with the ball we had and the fact we didn’t want to play too much rugby in our own half because we were punished when we did that in the first round, it was part of our strategy to kick quite a bit. But we won that kicking battle I felt, territory counts for a lot, so it was part of our plan,” Everitt said.

Much of that success has been down to the brilliance of flyhalf Pat Lambie, whose confidence has just been growing exponentially since he kicked that last-minute penalty to beat the All Blacks last October.

“Pat is on top of his game, he’s fighting to go to the World Cup as the number one flyhalf. We’re very happy with how he’s going and his game management has been outstanding, and obviously with the leadership role he plays, he just keeps getting better and better,” Everitt said.

The one major negative to come out of the weekend, though, was the knee injury suffered by lock Pieter-Steph du Toit. Initial reports suggested the form second-rower will be out for eight months, having re-injured the same knee that kept him out for most of last year, which would take him beyond the end of the World Cup in October.

But Everitt said there was still a small element of hope for Du Toit, who went to see his specialist in Cape Town on Monday.

In terms of a replacement, there is zero chance of Stephan Lewies playing yet because he is still four weeks away from action as he recovers from knee and shoulder surgery, while Willem Alberts’ absence due to a hamstring strain has been put at two to three weeks.

Veteran Marco Wentzel is therefore likely to catch a start, with the “Giant”, Lubabalo Mtyanda, returning to the bench.

Loose forward Tera Mtembu and centre Paul Jordaan are the other players still on the injured list, while utility forward Etienne Oosthuizen, the former Brumbies player who Jake White brought to the Sharks, has returned to the training field.

Ex-Pumas loose forward Renaldo Bothma returns to the Cell C Sharks starting line-up in place of the injured Willem Alberts for their Vodacom SuperRugby match against the Toyota Cheetahs in Bloemfontein on Saturday after director of rugby Gary Gold announced a team with four changes on Thursday.

The Sharks will be eager to put a torrid 2015 behind them as they begin pre-season training for 2016, director of rugby Gary Gold saying they will be looking to start a new era of success for the KwaZulu-Natal side.

“Everyone’s had a good break so now we need to hit the ground running. I hope this young side will be energetic and enthusiastic, because I see this as a new era and I’m certainly excited, keen to put the last year behind us as quickly as possible,” Gold told The Citizen before the Sharks started their pre-season training on Tuesday.

Despite his optimism, Gold conceded that there would be no quick-fix solution to the problems that bedevilled the Sharks in 2015, which saw them finish 11^th in Super Rugby and fifth in the Currie Cup.

“It’s very important to make it clear that we won’t be making any excuses, our performance simply wasn’t good enough, especially for a franchise as big as the Sharks. But an era was coming to an end, we lost a lot of stalwarts and it’s not ideal having four coaches in 18 months at the same time. Change hit us hard and we also had insurmountable injuries, but the bottom line is that the performance was poor,” Gold said.

While Gold is firmly in the camp that favours South African rugby moving forward towards a more free-flowing style, he says defence will be the focus in terms of their Super Rugby preparations.

“Of course I want us to be more of a threat with ball in hand, but defence is the foundation of every good team. I know it’s not romantic, but you learn a lot about a team by how hard they work for each other in defence. We were substantially better in the Currie Cup, our points difference of only -8 shows that, but we need to put pressure on the opposition through our defence.

“A lot of tries these days still come from turnovers, mistakes and poor kicks, and we need to try and force those through our defence. But we also need to be more clever and, strategically, to think more out of the box. Robert du Preez [the new assistant coach] also ticks a lot of boxes for us, he’s a hard taskmaster and there are no half-measures with him,” Gold said.

Sharks director of rugby Gary Gold on Monday defended the decision to sign Springbok hooker Chiliboy Ralepelle despite the fact that he is serving a doping ban, saying other teams were also chasing his signature and that his suitability had been thoroughly investigated.

Ralepelle, who won two Super Rugby titles with the Bulls, was handed a two-year suspension by WorldRugby after an out-of-competition doping test in March 2014 returned a positive test for a metabolite of an anabolic steroid, drostanolone, he had used while recovering from an operation on an anterior cruciate ligament following a knee injury he sustained while playing for Toulouse against Biarritz in France.

“We have done due diligence and Chiliboy is very remorseful. He deserved his penalty, there is no excuse for what he did and he knows that, but he will have done his time in April next year, four games into Super Rugby.

“We weren’t the only people in the market for him and I hope he will do his talking on the field. He’s an outstanding leader, he’s matured as a player at 29 and he deserves a second chance. Personally I think he got a raw deal before going to France, it was very sad that he was let go. He’s an outstanding player and, while I was forwards coach for the Springboks, he put John Smit and Bismarck du Plessis under real pressure. His work-rate is sensational, he carries and drives well and his set-piece work is precise,” Gold told The Citizen on Monday.

Several critics have expressed their anger at the decision to sign the hooker with 22 Test caps between 2006 and 2013, but the double-standard is clear when one considers how Johan Ackermann, who was banned for two years in 1997 for taking nandrolone to help heal a knee injury, has been welcomed back into the fold and is doing great work as the Lions coach.

The new year will also see the Sharks sporting a new assistant coach in former Springbok scrumhalf Robert du Preez, who has just steered the North-West Leopards to the Currie Cup First Division title, and a new defence coach in Omar Mouneimne, who has worked with Italy, Edinburgh, the EP Kings and Lyon.

Highly promising Western Province lock Ruan Botha has been mentioned as another possible signing for the Sharks, but he is still under contract in Cape Town, although Springbok Pieter-Steph du Toit’s move from Durban to the Stormers could see him eager to relocate.