'Blood in the water' but will Sharks take advantage?

Leinster’s New Zealand-born Ireland international wing James Lowe has spoken of the disappointment at his provincial team’s poor start to the season and says his team is aware that their next opponents, the Hollywoodbets Sharks, will be seeing “a bit of blood in the water”.

The Sharks play their third Vodacom United Rugby Championship tour game in Dublin on Saturday evening and desperately need to win after they were held to a draw by the Dragons, who finished stone last last season, in Newport last weekend. The Sharks lost their opening game to the 2024 champions, Glasgow Warriors.

While it isn’t crisis time just yet for the Sharks, who would have been expected to beat the Dragons but not the other two sides they face on their tour, they do need to get the show on the road quickly if they are to challenge for the top-four URC finish they achieved last year. Ideally, they’d like to go one better than their third-place finish and end in the top two, which would mean home advantage in two play-off games should they win the first one.

The Sharks will be hoping to be bolstered by a phalanx of returning Springboks, although their coach, John Plumtree, may well hold his powder back for the two home games his team will play before the international break, starting with a fixture against what so far has looked a resurgent Ulster team determined to atone for recent failures.

LEINSTER UNDER MASSIVE PRESSURE

But if the Sharks are under pressure, that is even more the case for Leinster. The reigning champions are second last on the log, and they lost both their games in South Africa, having been thrashed 35-0 by the DHL Stormers before losing 39-31 to the Vodacom Bulls. According to Lowe, who watched the game along with other Leinster members of the British and Irish Lions squad that toured Australia in July and August, there was an improvement in Pretoria, but the entire playing group knows that what has happened so far just isn’t good enough.

“We normally only lose a couple in the regular season, so to get them out of the way now isn’t good, is it?” the 33-year-old told the Irish media at the start of the buildup week.

“Obviously the boys are just back in the building after returning from a very disappointing couple of weeks (in South Africa). But I think there are a few international boys coming back into the mix and going forward, hopefully we can help them out. We will give them a cuddle for a couple of days, and after that, it’s business as usual.

“There will be a fair few more South Africans lining up and there’s blood in the water. Hopefully we can turn it around and put in a performance at home that we are really happy with, and it can set us right for the rest of the competition.”

The hurt that seems to be flowing through Leinster after their worst start to a season in 22 years should be seen as a warning by the Sharks, as was Lowe’s pledge about what needs to be done.

“Winning ugly won’t be good enough,” he said. “We need a (good) performance. I think everyone expects that. I don’t think anyone expected us to come back from South Africa with only one point. I also don’t think anyone expected us to concede 35 points and not score any points in that first game (against the Stormers). A performance is always what we are chasing, but a few things need to change. Hopefully on Saturday, we can do that.”

QUESTION MARKS OVER NIENABER’S DEFENSIVE SYSTEM

Leinster conceded 74 points in South Africa, scored just 31, and conceded try-scoring bonus points in both games, so there are now question marks over former Bok World Cup-winning coach Jacques Nienaber’s defensive system. However, Lowe doesn’t share the concern.

“Don’t worry about that, I think going forward we will be fine,” said Lowe.

“That first game was incredibly disappointing against a very good Stormers team. It’s tough going over there, we came up against two very good sides and at the end of the day it’s a physical game and if you don’t turn up for it, that can happen to you. I think it was a massive step up for the Bulls game, fair play, we were in it until the end.

“The most important thing was probably the ease of how the tries came, the ease with which we conceded points. There’s still a lot of growth in that area and once we get back to how we defend, I really think teams are going to struggle and hopefully we can take a step in the right direction this weekend.”

We will only know later in the week which Sharks Boks will play against Leinster in which for them will be an appetiser for next month’s clash between the world champions and Ireland at the Aviva Stadium at international level. However, there are several players who didn’t play much in the most recent Castle Lager Rugby Championship matches and it would be no surprise if Lowe is up against 2019 World Cup winner Makazole Mapimpi as a direct opponent.

Andre Esterhuizen, Grant Williams, Bongi Mbonambi and Vincent Koch should be other Boks in action, with perhaps Eben Etzebeth and Siya Kolisi waiting to be unleashed on Ulster in Durban. But with the Sharks having problems at lock due to injuries, it will be very tempting for Plumtree to select Etzebeth, who did not feature in the second game in New Zealand.