By Craig Lewis

The battle up front is undoubtedly going to be absolutely crucial when the Sharks meet the Lions in Johannesburg this Saturday, with both sides boasting formidable packs who will hold nothing back.

This week, the Lions have placed an added emphasis on their scrumming and the pack has been put through several rigorous sessions, with coach Hans Coetzee admitting they had to ensure they’d be on top of their game in order to get the better of the Sharks’ “formidable” forwards.

One of the primary physical enforcers in the Sharks pack is flanker Jean Deysel, formerly of the Lions, who agreed that the set-pieces would be the scene of intense battles for ascendancy. “The Lions always have a strong pack, they’re known as strong scrummagers, and have very physical forwards. So the set-pieces will be absolutely crucial and that’s sure to be one of the key areas this Saturday without a doubt.

“If you can lay a foundation and build momentum through your set-pieces then the battle is half won.”

In the first half against the Leopards this past weekend, the Sharks were frustrated at the breakdown before becoming more accurate in the second stanza and reaping the rewards as a result.

However, they will know they need to be on the ball from the outset against the Lions, with captain Cobus Grobbelaar having proved himself as one of the best breakdown exponents in the game.

“They have a number of highly impressive forwards, but Cobus is obviously a key member of their pack,” Deysel agreed. “I think he is one of the most underrated openside flankers in the game and against him and the rest of the Lions’ loose-trio, we’ll need to be extremely accurate and really step it up on Saturday.”

Looking back at their comprehensive win over the Leopards – the Sharks’ fourth in a row – Deysel said it was incredibly important for them to keep the ball rolling against the Lions.

“Overall, we took enough positives out of the game to feel good going forward, obviously there are some areas that we needed to work on, which we have this week.

The match kicks-off at 5.05pm and will be refereed by Jonathan Kaplan.

5 Responses to Battle up front for Sharks and Lions

  • 1

    Tanne Janne!!!!!

  • 2

    Hi Trupi…

    GBS wat is ‘n Bot? sien daar is 1 Bot?

  • 3

    @Tripples

    Ek sit nou net & dink dieselfde ding…

    Internet bots, also known as web robots, WWW robots or simply bots, are software applications that run automated tasks over the Internet. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone. The largest use of bots is in web spidering, in which an automated script fetches, analyses and files information from web servers at many times the speed of a human. Each server can have a file called robots.txt, containing rules for the spidering of that server that the bot is supposed to obey.
    In addition to their uses outlined above, bots may also be implemented where a response speed faster than that of humans is required (e.g., gaming bots and auction-site robots) or less commonly in situations where the emulation of human activity is required, for example chat bots.
    These chatterbots may allow people to ask in plain English and then formulate a proper response. These bots can often handle many tasks, including reporting weather, zip-code information, sports scores, converting currency or other units, etc. Others are used for entertainment, such as SmarterChild on AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger and Jabberwacky on Yahoo! Messenger.
    An additional role of IRC bots may be to lurk in the background of a conversation channel, commenting on certain phrases uttered by the participants (based on pattern matching). This is sometimes used as a help service for new users, or for censorship of profanity.

    beteken nog nie veel vir my nie 🙂

  • 4

  • 5

    @trupisero – Dankie trupi, beteken net dat ons nou famous raak Snoek 😆

Users Online

Total 9 users including 0 member, 9 guests, 0 bot online

Most users ever online were 3735, on 31 August 2022 @ 6:23 pm