Blair’s boys come up short swimming with Sharks

Mike Blair declared himself proud of Edinburgh’s effort despite Sharks taking a bite out of their 2023 unbeaten run.

The capital outfit fell out of the URC play-off places as the 14 men from South Africa held on for a narrow win.

Adam McBurney grabbed two tries, only for Sharks to come from five points down at the break in a scoreless second period for Blair’s boys.

The coach said: “I am proud – proud of a lot of the effort and the commitment. We just lacked a bit of precision under pressure, not throughout the 80 minutes but during certain periods. I’m proud of the effort but I would have been happier if we had got the win.

“Playing against the Sharks, you know they will come at you with a lot of line speed and put you under pressure.

“And we did not handle that quite as well as we could.

“We gave Sharks a bit of field position but then from the 20th to 40th minute we broke the game up, getting counter attacks and some turnover ball when the Sharks were not as well set and we scored a couple of cracking tries.

“I am trying to get the balance right. I am disappointed not to get the win but pleased with large parts of that performance.”

Sharks took the lead five minutes in when scrum-half Grant Williams picked off a high pass in midfield and no one in the home defence got close to him with 40 metres to the line.

Edinburgh winger Wes Goosen was shown a yellow card 15 minutes in for illegally halting an attack close to his own line and Sharks pounced as a simple move down the line from a scrum ended in Marnus Potgieter scoring.

With Goosen back on, Edinburgh got their act together as McBurney finished off after a one-two with Boan Venter.

Five minutes later, McBurney got his second from a lineout maul and Charlie Savala added the extras to level at 14-14.

But it only stayed that way for a minute. When a Sharks attack broke down, Goosen hacked ahead, Edinburgh seized hold of the ball and eventually Henry Immelman finished off in the corner. Sharks closed the gap to two points with a Curwin Bosch penalty after the restart.

But just as it looked easier for them to score a third try, they were penalised on the Edinburgh line for not releasing.

In the 60th minute, Bosch was just short with a monster penalty from inside his own 10-metre line. Two minutes later, however, they did regain the lead with a close-range try by Kerron van Vuuren.

Sharks sub Carlu Sadie was yellowcarded for a high tackle and Edinburgh got back on top but it was too late.