Griquas aim for flawless performance

COMING off their great 43-36 win last Friday night against the Free State XV at Tafel Lager Park in the SuperSport Rugby Challenge, Griquas will hoping to continue their forward momentum when they host the Cell C Sharks XV at Tafel Lager Park tonight, with the match kicking off at 7pm.

Griquas beat the Sharks XV 28-7 in the first round of the competition in April at Kings Park, and even brought home a bonus point from that match, and will be expecting a much tougher challenge from a Sharks team that would want to reassert themselves in the central region.

Hopefully Griquas will make amends for their poor start and the lapse of concentration in the last 15 minutes during the Free State encounter, where their structure and game plan was nowhere to be seen. The team has been concentrating on rectifying these and other mistakes and formulating new plans during this short week’s practice sessions.

Assistant coach, Dave Hesketh said that Griquas had allowed themselves to be put under far too much pressure on Friday.

“We were a little disappointed with our performance against the Cheetahs, but it was great scoring lots of tries, some of them being quite brilliant. However, we did put ourselves under a lot of pressure with some of our decision-making early in the game, as well as towards the end of the match, where we lost our concentration.”

Hesketh also said that Griquas could not afford another lapse in concentration against a good Sharks XV team.

“A big emphasis for this week will be our ability to stay focused for the full 80 minutes. The Sharks are a very strong side and well coached and they will be stacked with a wealth of experience, so it will be a good test for our team. They like to play a confrontational game and put the opposition under pressure, so it should be a good battle, particularly up front.”

“Training has gone well this week even though it’s a short week and we will be ready to go on Thursday night,” the coach added.

Meanwhile, as a bonus for the supporters who make it to Tafel Lager Park tonight, the Griqua Under-20 team will take on their Border counterparts in the main curtain-raiser which kicks-off at 4.30pm.

The gates open at 3pm.

AJ Coertzen, Ederies Arendse, Kyle Steyn, Tertius Kruger, Koch Marx, André Swarts, Renier

Botha, Jason Fraser, Sias Koen, Wendal Wehr, Pieter Jansen van Vuren, Shaun McDonald, Ewald van der Westhuizen, AJ Le Roux and Marius Fourie.

Wilmar Arnoldi, Mthunzi

Moloi, Jonathan Janse van Rensburg, RJ Liebenberg, Christiaan Meyer, George Whitehead and Eric Zana.

Glen Nieuwoudt, Jeandré Lukas, Jacques Beukes, Pieter Snyman, Joe-Lythen Willemse, Lee-Andro Swartz, JP Roets, Lohan Zeelie, Jayson Pietersen, Willem Fourie, Andries Kruger (c), Ruan Smit, Heinrich Fourie, Taliesen Dick and Hendrik Venter.

Conrad van Aswegen, Christopher Rolomana, Pieter Bexuidenhout, Nakedi Thoka, Kylan Griqua, Renier Venter and Cameron Kritzinger.