Sharks coach JP Pietersen says they want to develop talented youngsters such as Jaco Williams and move away from their buying too many ready-made players.
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Not that long ago, Durban rugby fans joked that they could not make up their minds whether the Springboks were top-heavy with Sharks or the Sharks were top-heavy with Springboks.
It amounted to the same thing, of course, except that it made no difference to the Springboks, while it severely impacted the performance of the Sharks across a season.
Durbanites know too well the old story of a dozen Boks returning to Kings Park and the team shooting up the URC log, only to plummet when the same players returned to national duty. But this is going to change at The Tank, and like the best type of change, it will be evolution rather than revolution.
In essence, the green-and-gold top-heaviness will be gradually phased out as the Sharks change their recruitment strategy from buying the best to producing the future best through their own structures.
This was explained at a Sharks information session held for select media on Friday. “We are not throwing one (recruitment) strategy out of the window for a totally new strategy,” said CEO Shaun Bryans.
“It is all about balance and focusing on having the right players in the environment, whether they are currently Springboks or not. Certainly, from a balance and emphasis point of view, what we have learned is that it seems to work better bringing people through our own structures. It creates better cohesion,” Bryans said.
To be fair to the Sharks, for over a year they have tilted their buying emphasis from ready-made Springboks to SA Schools and Junior Springboks players. The success of this was seen in the Sharks juniors winning the SA Rugby U21 Cup last year.
“But the senior Springboks are important when you get to playoff time, when you are talking about the Champions Cup,” Bryans continued. “So it is an evolution of the recruitment strategy rather than a new one.”
The CEO added that it is simplistic to say it is better not to contract any Springboks because of their unavailability.
“Not all Springboks are created equal, if I could put it that way. We at the Sharks have been guilty of this, too, in that we throw around the term ‘Springbok’ when there is a vast difference between a senior Springbok, an up-and-coming Springbok, somebody with one cap versus someone with 100 caps.
“But, yes, it is increasingly difficult to make it work (having a large number of current Boks), given the playing load on the Springboks, and it doesn’t apply to all of them. Last calendar year, they played 15 games, and it will be similar this year, which has a material impact on us. So we would be stupid not to refine our recruitment and retention strategy accordingly.”
JP Pietersen said he will not be in the same position as his predecessor, John Plumtree, who last year had only a handful of players for the URC pre-season. “That was the issue last year,” the head coach admitted.
“But as you can see now, there are a lot of youngsters who have been blooded into the senior squad, and we are giving them opportunities in big games, not like we used to by playing them in games that were not important.
“You saw that in the game against the Stormers, where we gave new talent a chance (wing Jaco Williams), and this weekend against Munster, we have Luan Giliomee starting at fullback. This is what we are going to do — blood youngsters and see if they are capable of performing at URC level. We want to see them in pressure situations, so we are blending up-and-coming youth with the seniors that we already have.”
On that point, the Sharks have extended the contracts of veterans Bongi Mbonambi and Vincent Koch. This is shrewd because they are slipping out of Springbok contention and will be around to mentor Junior Bok front-rowers such as Phiwayinkosi “Rambo” Kubheka, Kai Pratt, and Sethu Mnebelele.
“We have a plan for the 2026/2027 URC season,” Pietersen continued. “This is why the national Under-23 competition (which is getting underway) is important for us to see more of our youth coming through, and it will be the same with the Currie Cup.”