Sharks need time to gel – Everitt

Despite their 33-24 loss to the Pumas in Nelspruit last Friday, Everitt cut a calm and relaxed figure at the Sharks team announcement on Thursday. The backline boss attended in the absence of head coach Gary Gold and reflected on why he thought the Sharks went down in their first match of the domestic competition.

“Like the past Currie Cup campaigns, it’s never easy to play the guys who have been in the Vodacom Cup because they’ve had six months to prepare. We had a new team on Friday night, so I think there were some teething problems as far as that was concerned,” Everitt explained.

“We had three U20 guys playing; the Du Preez twins turned 20 last week so they haven’t had much Currie Cup experience. Although you talk about it being a tough fixture to the youngsters, they only realise once they’re on the field how tough it really is. The Pumas are a tough side and they’ve shown that in the past, they’re very competitive and physical. I wouldn’t say we underestimated them; it was just a little bit of a shock at how they came at us physically and unfortunately it took us 40 minutes to adapt which was just too late at the end of the day.”

The Sharks seemed completely shell-shocked by the physicality of the home side and were completely outclassed in the first half. Trailing 27-7 at the half-time break, the Sharks were in deep trouble and could have gone on to lose by an even bigger margin.

“We had our backs on the wall at half time and we had to pull ourselves together because the result could have been very bad.  But the guys fought back nicely, we got back into the game and unfortunately we had a few opportunities to score in the second half and we didn’t take them – the result could have been quite different.”

Everitt was quite confident that his charges needed a couple more games together to click as a unit – citing their decision to play just one warm-up game as a factor in the team’s lack of cohesion.

“We are a new team; there were eight debutantes on Friday night so it does take a while to gel. We want to improve as quickly as possible and get the campaign rolling with a win this weekend,” Everitt said.

“But at the same time we didn’t have any practice games before the Currie Cup which was part of our plan because we focused on conditioning so sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit as far as game time is concerned. We are well aware of that, and I think Friday night’s result was due to some teething problems and as we stay together longer as a group we will improve.”

Odwa Ndungane comes in on the right wing for the injured S’bura Sithole in the only change to the Sharks backline. Daniel du Preez replaces his injured twin Jean-Luc at blindside flank, while Jean Deysel makes a long awaited return to the starting lineup in place of the injured Khaya Majola.

Thomas du Toit and Juan Schoemann start at tighthead and loosehead prop respectively in a complete change to the Sharks front row.

Cell C Sharks team to face the EP Kings this Saturday:

15. Joe Pietersen 
14. Odwa Ndungane
13. Wandile Mjekevu
12. Heimar Williams
11. Andre Esterhuizen
10. Lionel Cronje
9. Stefan Ungerer
8. Philip van der Walt
7. Daniel du Preez 
6. Jean Deysel
5. Marco Wentzel (Capt)
4. Etienne Oosthuizen
3. Thomas du Toit
2. Monde Hadebe 
1. Juan Schoeman