Sharks hoping to catch patchy Edinburgh cold in URC clash

The Sharks will hope to capitalise on the patchy form this season of United Rugby Championship (URC) strugglers Edinburgh when they battle it out in their match at the DAM Heath Stadium on Saturday night (kick-off 7:15pm).

It has been an incredibly strange season for an internationally laden Edinburgh team, who were tipped for a top five finish in the URC before the competition kicked off its second edition.

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Instead, it has been a difficult season where they have won just five out of 12 games so far, with two of those wins coming against bottom feeders Zebre.

However, in the Champions Cup competition, Edinburgh have been transformed, winning three of their four pool games, including an impressive home win against English Premiership log leaders Saracens over the past weekend.

This will give the hosts plenty of confidence as they take on a Sharks team that has been on the up over the past two months.

The Sharks themselves have had their struggles this season and after a disheartening 35-0 drubbing at home against Cardiff at the end of November, they let go of coach Sean Everitt and replaced him with Director of Rugby Neil Powell.

On the up

Since then the Sharks have firmly been on the up, winning three of their four URC games, while also winning three out of four Champions Cup games, but they do head into the match off the back of a loss over the past weekend against Harlequins.

Although they sit one place below Edinburgh at ninth on the URC log, the Sharks are only one point behind them with two games in hand, so a win would push them into the top eight and give them a big boost going forward.

Powell explained that the team was looking to put things right this weekend after the Harlequins loss.

“It was not the result that we were looking for against Harlequins. So the guys are really keen to go out there this weekend and rectify all the mistakes we made in that match,” said Powell.

“But it is a different conditions and a different pitch as well. I think the artificial pitch is something to get used to. We did as much training as we could this week on an artificial pitch just to understand what we will get on the weekend.

“So the preparations have gone well and hopefully we can carry over that good work in training into the game and get a good result against Edinburgh.”