Sharks tighten up maul defence ahead of URC showdown with Dragons

The Sharks have placed a lot of their emphasis this week on their maul defence as they gear up to face the Dragons at Newport on Friday night in the second round of the United Rugby Championship, according to loose forward Phepsi Buthelezi.

It’s no surprise, considering it was an area Glasgow Warriors were able to exploit in securing a 35-19 win in the Scottish capital in their opening United Rugby Championship match on Friday night.

“We thought we could have been better in some aspects of our game, like our maul stops. I think we ended up getting two yellow cards and both those yellow cards came from mauls. That was a bit disappointing from our side and something we’re going to look to improve this week,” Buthelezi said in an online media conference on Monday.

However, the loose forward doesn’t feel that it points to deeper systemic issues in the Sharks team.

“There’s nothing wrong with our system. After reviewing that game it was just individual errors from those two maul stops, one of those errors coming from myself.

"We’ve got a system that works for us, but once we move away from that system then we scramble, we look for desperate actions and, at this level, when a team is close to your try line, actions like that get punished,” he said.

Just like coach John Plumtree, Buthelezi felt the Sharks had more than held their own against the former champions for most of the match.

“We really felt in that game, with about 10 minutes to go when we were only two points behind. I think this was a trend throughout the game where I think our discipline wasn’t good enough.

"I think we conceded something close to 15 or 16 penalties, so that obviously had a ripple effect and, against a team like that, if you’re going to keep making those errors, they really know how to close out a team well.”

He admitted that they often got sucked into overplaying in certain areas by the relentless pace of the Glasgow game and will be keen to improve their game management come Friday.

While the side from Durban has an impressive record against the Welsh side, Buthelezi was keen to point out that this is a completely different Dragons team, under a new coach. He felt their performance in the 42-21 loss against Ulster was better than the scoreline suggested.

“We had a look at their game against Ulster and we thought they were really competitive. They’ve got a bigger, slightly more physical pack, so we’ve got our work cut out for us this Friday,” he warned.

Friday’s match at Rodney Parade kicks off at 9.05pm.