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Cape Town - The Sharks are eager to get their Currie Cup season track following a disappointing home loss to the Golden Lions at Kings Park last weekend.
The Durbanites suffered their second loss in three starts when they went down 31-16 to the men from Johannesburg.
They opened their campaign with a 33-24 reverse to the Pumas in Nelspruit, before beating the EP Kings 33-25 in Durban the following week.
Assistant coach Sean Everitt has taken the positives from last weekend’s home defeat to the Lions.
“Although the scoreboard doesn’t really reflect the positives, there certainly was a lot of improvement on the week before,” Everitt told the Sharks’ official website.
“There was a lot of energy for this game, our defence took a big step up, we were in the game with 14 minutes to go and unfortunately the three errors at the end cost us dearly.
“So while we’re not happy with the result, there were big improvements. There’s a lot to work with at this stage.”
Everitt is hoping for improvement as they prepare to face the Kings in Port Elizabeth on Saturday (17:05 kick-off).
“We need to cut out the unforced errors, we seem to lack composure when we’re under pressure and our scrum battled which didn’t allow our attack to function the way we wanted it to, so we need to sort out our set-piece.
“The good news is that the guys want to improve, they want to do well for their province and the jersey. We’re looking for another step-up this weekend and hopefully we get the bounce of the ball coming our way this time.”
Although the Sharks are currently on a learning curve, Everitt says they can’t use the excuse that they are re-building or developing.
“I don’t think there are any excuses about having a young team because the juniors all put their hands up and played exceptionally well. The contribution from Francois Kleinhans was massive, likewise the Du Preez (Daniel and Jean-Luc) brothers. It’s not about that, it’s about us cutting out the unforced errors. We let in four soft tries, those four little slip-ups cost us and they made us pay dearly.”
Victory at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium is imperative, Everitt insists.
“We judge ourselves on our performance and we’ve been saying from the start of the season that we want to put on a display that our supporters are proud of. From a results point of view, that is also important, we want to win, because that brings more confidence and takes away the fear of failure.
“We want to win this week.”
