VIDEO: Cracking Final between the best teams
Western Province coach John Dobson believes his team and the Sharks have proven, with their performances throughout the season, they are worthy contenders.
Dobson acknowledged that his team may not have been the most consistent, but when they fired they were right up there with the table-topping Sharks.
"I don't think we should have been 10 points off the Sharks on the standings,"he said of his team, ahead of the trip to Durban for Saturday's Final.
"It is an underachievement by us.
"I am not trying to be arrogant, but if you look at the personnel in the teams, these are the two best teams.
" I think it's going to be the best Final you can get in terms of the players that will be out there.
"The Sharks deserve to be there."
He said it is going to be a classic Final.
"A Sharks [versus] Province Final is a classic."
Dobson said he won't be reading too much into his team's 31-20 win over the Sharks in Durban 10 days ago – in the final round of league action.
"As much as we would like to read into it, it has a lot to do with the mental side and they didn't need to win that game.
"We saw some opportunities against them, our attack against their defence.
"It is going to be a cracking Final and we will be up for it,"
WP captain Chris van Zyl also felt the erratic nature of WP this season won't be a factor in the Shark Tank.
"The way I see it, is the games this year that we had to win, somehow we just seemed to win them," Van Zyl said.
"We have one more game and it is a 'have to' – we have to win it.
"We definitely learnt a lot [this season]. The best is that when things go awry, we have to fall back into what we know and make sure we get back into our rhythm."
Province have been in a knock-out mode for the last few weeks – having to beat the Sharks to secure play-off spot and secure home semifinal, then they had to beat the Lions this past weekend in the semifinal.
"I wish it wasn't like that, but there were a number of games this year where the theme of the week was: 'We got to win this match.'
"Those were the games we won."
By Jan de Koning
@king365ed
@rugby365com
