The Hollywoodbets Sharks travel to George to take on the SWD Eagles in a pre-season warm-up match this evening, looking to tick several boxes ahead of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship (URC) campaign, which kicks off in three weeks.
Head coach JP Pietersen has put his squad through their paces for the last couple of months, having thoroughly assessed their performances in the 2025/26 tournament to identify exactly where and how the team can improve.
These pre-season friendlies, starting tonight against the Eagles and continuing next week against the 10Bet Lions, deliver the perfect opportunity to test, analyse, and refine both team and individual performances before their opening competitive clash against the Ospreys at Hollywoodbets Kings Park on Saturday, 26 September. [1]
“We’ve had a bit of time to build up our pre-season; we’re now in week seven, and it’s gone well, with three more weeks left before our first game,” Pietersen explains.
“What we’ve done is review and look at how we can get better as a group. The first block focused on robustness and building up the individual athlete as best as possible physically, as well as improving individual skill sets. The second block focused on the units, the mini-groups of forwards and backs and how they connect, while working on our attack and defence. This final block is now all about the team, building cohesion and collective performance.”
To that end, tonight’s match offers the ideal platform to implement those strategies and assess the metrics that have been the core focus during gruelling pre-season training sessions.
“We’ll be working on how we integrate those units into the team. We also have some Carling Currie Cup guys in the mix, so we’re hoping to build cohesion, and then next week brings another great opportunity against the 10Bet Lions,” Pietersen points out.
Discussing the Currie Cup, Pietersen noted that several standout performers from the domestic competition will be rewarded with opportunities to prove themselves at the VURC level.
“We found some quality guys. Unfortunately, Lyle Matthews isn’t eligible this week, although we really wanted to see him play, but we will monitor how his quad injury progresses. Along with a few other Currie Cup players and those returning from injury, we’ll hopefully see them in action next week.”
Boasting a strong blend of youth and experience, Pietersen will be hoping to see an exciting brand of rugby tonight, but also a disciplined performance that closely resembles what they have been working toward.
“The main objective is to give the boys crucial game time and to assess how close or how far we are in terms of match fitness from where we want to be,” says the head coach. “The second objective focuses on the individuals: seeing who will step up, how they manage themselves, how they perform under pressure, and how they gel within new combinations."
“The final piece is successfully implementing what we’ve worked on in pre-season into a live game situation, both on attack and defence. We want to be fast, physical, and relentless. We want our identity to speak for itself on the field. With these two friendlies, we hope to build towards our best 23 for the start of the competition and hit the ground running against the Ospreys.”