Sharks love the pressure

SUPER RUGBY SPOTLIGHT: Sharks fullback Curwin Bosch believes his team is well-suited to handle the pressure in their final Super Rugby round-robin game against the Jaguares in Durban.

The Sharks did themselves no favour with their 16-27 loss to the Stormers in Cape Town last weekend.

They are currently fighting out with the Melbourne Rebels for the final spot in this year’s Super Rugby play-offs. The Sharks will have to beat a difficult Jaguares team in the final round and then hope the Highlanders beat the Rebels to sneak into the play-offs through the back door.

“There’s definitely a bit of pressure after losing to the Stormers and knowing we have to beat the Jaguares this weekend if we want a chance to progress to the knock-outs,” Bosch told sharksrugby.co.za.

“But this team seems to thrive under pressure so we’re not giving up.”

He added: “We know we shot ourselves in the foot last weekend, every other team did us a favour, except us. But the team knows we have a second opportunity which doesn’t happen often in a competition of this nature.

“We’re looking forward to the challenge that lies ahead this week, a good challenge for this young group of players.”

Bosch revealed that they learned a lot from the Jaguares’ performance against the Bulls last weekend.

“We’ve looked at the video and spotted some weaknesses and hopefully we can execute the plan we have against them and play the kind of rugby we’re supposed to.

“If we don’t win this weekend, we’re done in this competition. So, we’re treating each game we play in the Super Rugby competition like a final – starting on Saturday.

“We need to fix our basics and do the things that are in our control and do them well. Sometimes we try to force things, the offload for example when we could be putting it through one more phase.

“Getting the basics right is going to be very important for us to regain our confidence.”

Source: @TheSharksZA