Sharks expected to focus more on URC than Challenge Cup

Some media people preoccupied with the fact that the Sharks are the reigning EPCR Challenge Cup champions and who expect this week’s visit to Bayonne for the round of 16 to be a big date in their season, but the reality might be quite different.

“We’re ambitious, we want to win it. We want to win a big trophy and right now we’re still in it,” Sharks coach John Plumtree said after his team’s disappointing 10-7 defeat to Leinster in a 14th-round United Rugby Championship (URC) clash in Durban at the weekend.

The “it” which Plumtree was referring to was not the Challenge Cup.

He was referring to the URC. The “big trophy” which he said needs to be won is also not the Challenge Cup, but the URC.

“We just have to make sure when we get back into the URC, which is a tour to Ulster and Edinburgh away, that we play really good rugby over there,” Plumtree said with reference to what he sees as his next biggest challenge.

The URC tour comes two weeks after this week’s trip to Lyon.

Win there and there is a chance they could come home to play the quarterfinal, with their opponents being the Ospreys or Scarlets.

But if they do that it would mean a logistical nightmare for the later more important challenge of trying to win the away URC games against Ulster and Edinburgh, by no means easy on the Sharks’ current form.

It would mean they fly home across the equator and then back again.

If the Sharks win in Lyon and get to play the quarterfinal away, at least they would then stay in Europe and not have to deal with the disadvantage of all the required flying.

But it would also mean their tour extends to four games (two EPCR and two URC).

And those two URC games are more important to Plumtree because it is a bigger competition.

The Sharks dropped into the Challenge Cup in 2024 when they failed to finish in the top four of their Champions Cup pool.

Plumtree has already won the Challenge Cup, just like he also at the start of the season won the Carling Currie Cup, and does not need to win it again.

He is after bigger trophies. His team’s place in the top eight of the URC means qualification for next season’s Champions Cup, is secure.

Despite the negativity around the Sharks’ recent form blip, they have still made a huge improvement in what Plumtree has referred to as the primary competition and they have a chance of winning that “big” trophy.

To do that they need to finish in the top four and their chances of doing that will be seriously disadvantaged by the logistical hoops they’d have to jump through if they also tried their best to win the Challenge Cup.

So expect a second-string team to go to Lyon this week, with the full strength squad, which expects to have Eben Etzebeth, Aphelele Fassi and Lukhanyo Am back in tow, to go to Edinburgh and Ulster two weeks after that.

SuperSport