After crashing out of the Investec Champions Cup, the Hollywoodbets Sharks head to Lyon’s fortress in the EPCR Challenge Cup Round of 16, determined to defend their title and conquer a venue that has buried many.
The Sharks are the defending Challenge Cup champions, having beaten Gloucester 36-22 at Tottenham Stadium in the 2023-24 final. Though the Sharks’ Round of 16 showdown with Lyon puts them in familiar territory, they’ve taken a very different road to this point in the tournament, and without their most fearsome forward.
Four months prior to Eben Etzebeth becoming the most-capped player in Springbok history, the confrontational lock made history when he captained the Sharks to Challenge Cup glory, claiming South Africa’s first European club cup title.
After a late start to last season, Etzebeth returned in time to revive a Sharks team that arrived in Round 12 of the 2023/24 Vodacom URC campaign with a 1-10 record.
The veteran enforcer put the team on his back in the Challenge Cup, chewing up ball carriers and busting tackles to spark a revival. Etzebeth scored three tries across a heavy-handed victory against Pau and a nail-biting loss to the Toyota Cheetahs before the Sharks tore into the quarter-finals with an aggregate score of 114-19 in big wins against Oyonnax, Dragons, and Zebre.
The margins narrowed significantly in playoff wins against Edinburgh and then ASM Clermont Auvergne before the Sharks met Gloucester in London in the May finale.
However, as is so often the case in rugby, the narrative has completely flipped over the past 11 months.
The Sharks are serious contenders for a top-four finish in the URC, but their Investec Champions Cup playoff hopes were shredded after successive defeats at English Premiership contenders Leicester and then against TOP 14 heavyweights Toulouse and Bordeaux. Etzebeth was on deck for the win against Sharks opening win against Exeter Chiefs but suffered a concussion in that match, which ruled him out of the three ensuing Champions Cup losses.
Unlike last season, when the Sharks could smell the Indian Ocean as they kicked off their Challenge Cup playoffs against Zebre and Edinburgh, the city of Lyon stand in the way to this year’s quarter-finals, and Matmut Stadium has proven to be a graveyard for some of the game’s best.
“It’s one place that I couldn’t win,” Springbok legend and Cheetahs director of rugby Frans Steyn said in the week leading up to the Round 4 showdown against Lyon in January.
Lyon won 68-21, hammering the Cheetahs with 10 tries in a ruthless display. The Sharks will be desperate to cure the disappointment of their Champions Cup campaign by retaining their historic European title, and the Lyon gauntlet may be exactly the challenge required to whet the Sharks’ appetite as they step into Matmut’s cauldron.
With their Investec Champions Cup dreams dashed, the Sharks are out for blood, and Lyon’s fortress offers the perfect stage to prove they’re still Europe’s hungriest pack.
A win here will bury the ghosts of this season’s setbacks and propel them toward another Challenge Cup crown.