Plumtree's frustration regarding unavailable Boks

SPOTLIGHT: Sharks head coach John Plumtree echoed his frustrations surrounding the challenges he faced so far in the United Rugby Championship.

The Sharks will face Ulster in their first home game of the season following a disappointing overseas tour.

They suffered defeats against Glasgow Warriors and Leinster, and drew 17-17 against the Dragons in Newport.

The Durban-based side were without most of their Boks for those matches, but that’s all about to change this weekend.

The Sharks selected 13 Boks in their starting line-up for this fixture.

Plumtree expressed his frustration about not having his top players available all the time through injury and national commitments.

He spoke about not having them available for pre-season training, which impacts plans that he has in place.

He also admitted that his team needs to reach a level where they can operate without any issues without their Boks.

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“Leo Cullen and I chatted about this on Saturday before our game, and he was frustrated because he didn’t have the [British and Irish] Lions players available to him.

“It’s frustrating. You don’t get to grow your game and systems and get the opportunity to work with the players where they can prove themselves as athletes and do the things you want to achieve with them.

“We need to get to a squad that we can win without our Boks.

“I feel this squad is the best squad we’ve ever had, but right now we’ve got several injuries to those URC players.

“There are some frustrations, but until you get a squad of 25 players that are all URC quality and maybe even more, and have your Boks on top of that, then you’ve got something to work with.

“Right now, we’re still in that process. We think we’re getting there.

“Of course, they’ve all got to be available to you at the right time.

“The time that I needed everyone available to go to work was basically our recent tour, and unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

“I hate making excuses, because it’s not the character I am, but at the same time, I think people need to understand that the quality of the opposition we play against that side of the world at this time of the year is pretty high.

“You need to go into those games with the confidence that you’ve done the necessary preparation.

“We can’t say that because of the disruptions we’ve had.

“What I will say is that all the coaches involved are working really hard to get everyone up to speed at the right time.

“The returning players have been good. You have guys like Siya [Kolisi], Eben [Etzebeth], Ox [Nche] and Andre Esterhuizen coming in.

“There’s a lot of leadership amongst them, and they’ve been really good and not trying to save the world.

“They’ve just been having little conversations relevant to the combinations around them and the overall team to inspire them to work hard and get ourselves in a good position in the URC by the end of the season.

“There are a lot of people that really care, and there’s a fair amount of them that maybe think that some of these boys don’t care, but they do.

“Sometimes we just have to put up with the dices that rolls for us, and sometimes they don’t roll well in our direction.

“That’s how we felt the past couple of weeks, but the excuses are over now. We have a good side playing this weekend, and we’re looking forward to playing in front of our home fans.”