Centre wary of wounded Stormers

It’s been a great year for Sharks centre and new Springbok Andre Esterhuizen (above), but he is well aware that their hosts this weekend, the Stormers, have endured a torrid Super Rugby campaign and they will be desperate to provide some joy for their beleaguered fans in their final game of the season.

The Stormers are languishing in 12th place overall with just five wins in 15 games, and there is the added motivation of Saturday’s clash potentially being the last Super Rugby match at Newlands, with the franchise set to move base to Cape Town Stadium in Greenpoint, built for the 2010 World Cup.

“It’s been a very exciting and very good year for me and I’m happy with my form lately. I was very fortunate to get a call-up for the Boks, we had almost our whole team here and they all learnt a lot, everybody has come back to show that here for the Sharks. It will help us a lot.

“But for the Stormers it’s their last home game after not having a great year and they will throw everything at us because they will want to finish strongly as a franchise.

“It will be a hard game for us. It’s always in the back of our heads that we knew we had to win our last three games, but it’s not our main focus.

“We know if we play our best rugby then we can win all three games,” Esterhuizen said yesterday.

The strongly-built Esterhuizen bore much of the incredible defensive burden on his broad shoulders last weekend against the Lions, but he praised the team as a whole for their phenomenal effort in keeping one of the best attacking sides in the competition quiet.

“It was a great game and the defence was brilliant, we are very happy with the result. All the boys stepped up physically and also pitched up mentally.

“That’s the biggest step up, to be mentally right. In the second half we were able to keep the ball more and started to play a bit of rugby,” Esterhuizen said.

They will throw everything at us because they will want to finish strongly. Andries Esterhuizen Sharks centre