Sharks up for front row battle against WP

CURWIN Bosch has not always had it easy this season playing behind an unreliable Sharks tight five but the flyhalf general is confident that he will have a reasonably comfy ride on Saturday when his team tackle

Western Province in the final round of the Currie Cup.

Bosch has had a superb season in the driving seat for the Sharks, despite his engine room sometimes being in reverse career, and at Newlands the Sharks are up against one of the best tight five units on the planet.

“I think that knowing what you are up against is half the battle won,” the 23-year-old said. “The WP front row won the World Cup, so our guys are preparing for a war. We are certainly aware of what is coming and we have made plans to deal with it.”

The Sharks and the Stormers were supposed to play each other in a Super Rugby Unlocked match in Durban in October, only for the game to be called off because of Covid-19 infections in the ranks of the Sharks, and now the teams finally get play each other - but not at Jonsson Kings Park.

The Sharks went unbeaten in Durban this year, going all the way back to beating the Bulls in a Super Rugby match in January, but they never got to host the Stormers, plus their away record has not been flash at all.

“There are no excuses for us putting in away performances like we did in losing badly to the Cheetahs and Lions,” Bosch said.

“That was just below par from all of us. We spoke last year when we got together for the first time that we wanted to make Kings Park a fortress. One of our goals was to be unbeaten at home in 2020 and we achieved that. Now it’s just for us to have the consistency to put up the same kind of performances and energy for away games.

“We have spoken about it and we are aware that we are not as good as we should be away from home, so we are looking to rectify that this weekend.”

To achieve that end, Bosch said the Sharks are close to rediscovering the form that made them red hot earlier this year.

“If you look at our performances where things haven’t really gone well … there weren’t a lot of big things that we got wrong,” Bosch stressed.

“Maybe it just came down to some individual errors, a decision-making error that we made, so it’s really small things that we were missing in the games in which we fell short.

“If you make those errors against teams like the Lions and Cheetahs, they will put you away.

“It isn’t really a big concern for us. Our plan still works and we can see that if we execute our plan, we are creating a lot of opportunities to score tries.

“It comes down to individual decision-making and that’s what cost us in those two games."