First Tour Challenge – Featured Durban Blog

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

After an opening round loss, to the Boland Cavaliers in the Currie Cup Qualifiers, the Cell C Sharks XV will be determined to get their campaign back on track with a better performance against Border, in East London, this Friday.

Cell C Sharks XV Head Coach, Michael Horak will request a more clinical performance from his chargers, who are up against a strong Border team, that are coming off a fantastic win against the Lions.

“Border pose a real threat in this competition and we know how good they are.  They will be high on confidence after their win against the Lions.”

Horak has made a few changes to his squad that played against Boland, which was necessitated by the loss of players to the touring Cell C Sharks squad or to injury.

In the front row, Ruan Kramer moves to the bench to make way for Gerhard Engelbrecht, who starts at tighthead.  At lock, Dave McDuling who was named on the bench last week gets a start ahead of Wian Vosloo.

Amongst the loose-forwards, Christiaan de Bruin starts in place of the injured Johan du Toit.  With S’bura Sithole currently on tour with the senior team, Neil Maritz moves to right wing and Nkululeko Marwana moves into the starting line-up at left wing.

Barend Potgieter, Rowan Gouws and Marius Louw are the new additions to the team for this clash.

Commenting on his team, Horak said:  We really looking forward to the game and are excited about the challenge.  We’re determined to play an exciting brand of rugby and I’m looking for an improved performance from our highly talented young team.”

Cell C Sharks XV