The Sharks face the Griquas in a crucial Currie Cup clash on Saturday, but John Plumtree will be sweating over the fitness of some key Springbok players.

While there is every chance that Springbok captain John Smit might be fit to face Griquas, it looks unlikely that Bok lock Johann Muller will join him in the squad.

“John is getting better, he’s had a bruised nerve in his neck and had some strength loss down one arm, but it’s coming back and I’m hoping he might be ready for this week,” the Sharks coach told a media briefing.

“However, Johann is getting frustrated with his arm [fractured back in Week One].

“It just doesn’t seem to be coming right, every time he takes a knock, it flares up.”

The Sharks need to take a full-house of five points from their final league match, in Kimberley, if they hope to keep alive their dream of a home Final.

Having already secured home ground advantage in the semifinals, with their opponents still to be determined, it is now all about overtaking Western Province at the top of the standings.

Both the Sharks and WP are on 49 points, but Province have a better points differential (221 for WP, against 178 for the Sharks).

While the Sharks will have their work cut out against Griquas – who themselves need two points from the game to qualify for the play-offs – WP need to overcome the Lions in Johannesburg and earn a bonus point if they want to stay top and retain the right to host the Final.

And, as the Sharks found out in Durban at the weekend, the Lions are certainly no pushovers.

Plumtree was full of praise for the men from Johannesburg, following his team’s fortuitous 19-17 win.

“Let’s talk about the Lions,” he said after the match. “If they played with that kind of attitude and guts throughout the season, I guess they’d be in the top four. They were outstanding at the breakdown, didn’t miss many tackles, they came here and played like we thought they would.”

Plumtree pointed out that the Lions probably won the battle of the breakdown thanks to their size advantage.

“They were immense in the collision areas and we couldn’t get any go-forward and spent a lot of time going backwards; we had a lot of slow ball. We couldn’t get our game going and didn’t help that with some errors, playing too laterally, we were impatient and the only thing I can say is that it was a timely wake-up call about Absa Currie Cup rugby.”

He added that it was a matter of not being able to build any continuity in their play, without having effective front foot ball to play with.

“We couldn’t create the space we wanted to, we weren’t effective at the collision area and they were really aggressive on the ball and that didn’t allow our game to flow. It turned out to be a real fight, and a fight we had to win.

“We had to find a way to win because we weren’t going to do it by playing good football, because we weren’t able to. We were a bit smaller than them so couldn’t really win those collisions; it was pretty hard work really.”

With Ruan Pienaar having been entrusted with the goal-kicking ahead of regular Juan Hernandez, Plumtree explained that the Argentinean just didn’t have a good week.

“He was struggling with his back and Ruan kicked nicely during the week, so it was nice to see him kick so well.”

Source: rugby365.com