Sharks need another gear
The Sharks may be the only unbeaten team in the Currie Cup, but they know they will need to raise their game when they travel to Pretoria this weekend.
The Durban side find themselves at the top of the Currie Cup standings after starting their season with consecutive victories over Western Province and the Golden Lions, but assistant coach Hugh Reece-Edwards is convinced that they will have to raise their game if they want to get the better of the Blue Bulls at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday.
He said: "It doesn't get any easier, the Blue Bulls away is always a tremendous clash, one of those where we don't have to motivate the guys too much because they'll certainly be up for it.
"It will be an interesting one, they will be desperate to win because they're playing at home, we want to keep our roll going, we need to win it. And if we improve then we can win it.
"We know we have the game plan to beat them up at Loftus, we just need to challenge the players and cut out the mistakes," said Reece-Edwards.
The Sharks assistant coach was pleased with the character his team showed to overcome the Lions at Kings Park on Saturday, but knows that there is plenty of room for improvement, especially in the scrums where the Lions managed to put them under some serious pressure at times.
He said: "We knew that with the way we were playing, we could get the result and at the end of the day we were really happy; this is a young side, an inexperienced side.
"The Lions have a very settled scrum obviously and our guys have been thrown together again, but they have played together at this level before. However, they were up against a big pack, with a big weight advantage and they took their opportunities against us," he added.
Despite taking a kick to the face, flyhalf Riaan Viljoen was given the all clear and aside from some minor bumps and bruises all of the Sharks players should be fit and ready to face the Blue Bulls, aside from Craig Burden who has received a Springbok call-up to replace the injured Bismarck du Plessis.
"Riaan [Viljoen] is alright, Meyer Bosman has a slight contusion to his knee, but it looks like he should be ok for next week, everyone is relatively fine," said Reece-Edwards.