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The Sharks Thread

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The South African provincial rugby teams are entering a new era with participation in the North and very likely the Champions cup.

I know there are not many Sharks supporters left on this forum, but we can give it a go as this is an exciting new era with lots of potential to discuss. And we don't have one of these yet as far as I'm aware.

I will try and post updates here with related news and discussion points.

Creating this I had to decide under which competition banner to create it and the Currie Cup seemed to be the correct choice.

We will be playing in the Currie Cup, URC and very likely the Champions cup from next year, the union is inherently spawned out of the provincial natal rugby union so the Currie Cup must surely be considered as the base, everything grows out of this into what could soon become a very distinct variation of Sharks team across multiple competitions. Never before have we been in so many competitions at the same time.

We are almost seeing a total development team in the Currie Cup. This IMO is a very good move.

I like the Dual CC and URC, yes it's true that it might disrupt the squad slightly, playing almost as dual teams, but it helps us develop our squad with more players and especially youngsters. They would have had less chance to develop if we had more continuity between the squad in the CC and URC, the Bulls is taking this approach it seems.

We need to build a very big strong squad in prep for the concurrent running of the Champions Cup, URC and Currie Cup.

There will also be the need to deal with the large contingent of Springboks leaving during the URC, also we are approaching the world cup so players won't always be readily available.

To me, it seems the strategy will be to start the season of URC with our strongest squad containing no Springboks, while the Rugby Championship is ongoing. They will mainly consist of Currie Cup players. We won't have our boks for large parts of next season with the World Cup.

Most likely they will only play crucial games maybe the Champions cup and URC playoffs only, the rest of our squad will be responsible to qualify for the URC playoffs and ensuring Champions cup qualification.

This is why it's so important to start developing our squad for so long. Leinster seems to have a good model. We only need to develop from within and not lose our best players, the signing of established Springboks is just a short term boost to the hype of the new era, we have historically been able to produce more great players than we could afford to hold. Why not now try and keep them instead of going around buying Springboks? If we can do both that would be great, it seems unrealistic in the long term though, unless we are underestimating the new ownership.

Our Currie cup squad is looking good, and I will be confident for any of those players to step into the URC team at any moment.

The new youngsters look like they have great potential, the future is looking bright, but global geopolitical conditions can throw South Africa into fresh economic turmoil and all could disappear soon, the economy is on a cliff and the Sharks need to deal with this, unfortunately.
 
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Is this the guy who played for the Southern Kings towards their end? I really rated him as a solid flyhalf and wondered where he'd got to. A good option if Bosch is having an off day.
 
Yes, it's that guy, he also played for the Sharks in the Currie cup for a while and on the URC away leg at the start. He did wonders for the backline as he attacks the line and we need that kind of 10 with the players we have. Depth is good though, Have not seen it in URC yet but I still remember the times there were huge injury crisis occurrences in Super Rugby. Just waiting for the inevitable to strike next year with all the competitions.
 

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