The Hollywoodbets Sharks will confront New Zealand at Kings Park on Friday without eight Springboks, marking the first time a side wearing the Sharks name has faced the All Blacks in a fixture 34 years in the making.
Bongi Mbonambi, Trevor Nyakane, Jason Jenkins and both Hendrikse brothers are sidelined through injury, whilst Aphelele Fassi, Ethan Hooker, Eben Etzebeth and André Esterhuizen are on Springbok duty. Late withdrawals compounded the selection crisis: Emile van Heerden pulled out on Monday, and Vincent Tshituka failed a head injury assessment, costing the Sharks a starting lock and a replacement forward inside 24 hours. What remains is a squad built around six players from the South Africa A side that beat Zimbabwe 40-0 in June, alongside a senior group whose URC season finished on 16 May.
A season to forget
The timing is stark. The Sharks finished the URC regular season in 10th position after logging just eight wins in 18 games, dropping out of play-off contention with two rounds to go following defeat to Edinburgh at Hive Stadium. Their Champions Cup campaign yielded two wins from four matches—victories over Saracens and Clermont offset by losses to Toulouse and Sale Sharks—relegating them to the second-tier Challenge Cup. They crashed out of European rugby altogether in the last 16, kept scoreless in the second half by Connacht in a 29-12 defeat.
For a squad bursting with big-name Springboks and overall talent, the collapse has been comprehensive. This fixture offers a rare chance to measure progress against the second-best team in the world, and to give Sharks supporters a contest they were denied earlier this year when the franchise's URC and Champions Cup campaigns imploded.
Rennie fields near-Test spine
Dave Rennie has stopped experimenting. Seven of the side that beat the DHL Stormers 38-21 last Friday are retained in the 23, but the rest of the team is close to the one that will start at Ellis Park on 22 August. The All Blacks scrum was pulled apart in Cape Town, and rain is forecast for the full 80 minutes in Durban, but the visitors arrive with much of their Test spine intact and two players set to make debuts off the bench.
Kings Park has been waiting since 1992, when Natal lost 43-25 in a fixture still spoken of in Durban as one of the great club-versus-country nights. The ledger reads six matches against Natal, five New Zealand wins and the 6-6 draw of 1960 that remains the province's high-water mark. The Sharks have never faced the All Blacks, and the 1996 tourists—whose series win is being commemorated across this eight-match schedule—never came to Durban for a provincial fixture at all.
JP Pietersen has been honest about the state of his squad, which is the correct call when the alternative is pretending. The foundation for a different Sharks team may yet be laid on Friday night, but it will be built from whatever remains.