The Sharks have recalled five of their Rugby Championship-winning South Africa internationals for Saturday’s game against Ulster in Durban (15:00 BST).<\/p>\n
World Cup winners Ox Nche, Eben Etzebeth and Siya Kolisi all return to the Sharks pack to join international team-mates Bongi Mbonambi and Vincent Koch, who featured against Leinster in Dublin last week, for the United Rugby Championship encounter at Kings Park. <\/p>\n
Springboks scrum-half Grant Williams and inside centre Andre Esterhuizen return to a backline which boasts a Test-level back three of Makazole Mapimpi, Ethan Hooker and Edwill van der Merwe.<\/p>\n
Hendrikse brothers Jaden and Jordan and Lukhanyo Am are named among the replacements. <\/p>\n
Wing Hooker, 22, says the Sharks are excited for their first home game of the season after defeats by Leinster and Glasgow and a draw with the Dragons on their European tour. <\/p>\n
“I want to make my home team proud, the vibe is pretty good being back and you get that sense of a home feeling,” said Hooker. <\/p>\n
“We’re all keen and looking forward to going out on Saturday and performing for our fans. They can look forward to this week’s game as much as we are. <\/p>\n
“We’ve trained really hard, exciting things are coming and we hope to see a full stadium coming out in support and watching a really good game of rugby.”<\/p>\n
Ulster, who have started the season with back-to-back wins, name their team on Friday. <\/p>\n
Sharks: E van der Merwe; E Hooker, J Julius, A Esterhuizen, M Mapimpi; S Masuku, G Williams; O Nche, B Mbonambi, V Koch, E Etzebeth, M Orie, S Kolisi, V Tshituka (capt), P Buthelezi. <\/p>\n
Replacements: F Mbatha, S Matanzima, R Dreyer, B Hlekani, E Tshituka, Jaden Hendrikse, Jordan Hendrikse, L Am. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sharks have recalled five of their Rugby Championship-winning South Africa internationals for Saturday’s game against Ulster in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-217561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}