Fassi primed for a furious Shark attack

• Lions speedster cannot wait to get back on the field after lengthy break

Exciting Sharks back division speedster Aphelele Fassi is expecting a fast and furious tempo when his team face the Lions in a United Rugby Cup (URC) showdown in Johannesburg on Saturday.

Fassi is itching to get back on the field after a long period of inactivity starting when he was not being used by the Springboks in Australia during the Rugby Championship.

The last time the dazzling fullback started a match was when the Boks played Argentina in Gqeberha in August.

Fassi burst onto the scene when he scored on debut against Georgia in July and many see him as a potential replacement for Willie le Roux in the SA national team.

“I have not played in a very long time and there is so much stuff that I learnt when I was with the Boks that I want to transfer on to the field,” the fullback said.

“I’ve listened to the other guys about their experiences of the URC so far and I am just superexcited to get out there this weekend and start putting in some good performances.

“Every player has a regular position. Moving from the Boks back into the Sharks setup should not be too big a transition as I have two quality Bok wings alongside me in the back three in Makazole Mapimpi and Sbu Nkosi to make that job easier.

“We are expecting a really fast game against the Lions. The Lions love to play with intensity and tempo and with ball in hand,” Fassi said.

“For some of us, this will be the first time playing URC and that is really exciting. It’s been a tough two weeks of training in scorching heat after the time off and we have worked hard on the things we wanted to focus on after taking a good look at how the initial URC games went for us.

“Playing that first overseas leg was obviously a difficult phase for us, but there was lots of learning we took from it, and I feel that has improved us.

“We are looking forward to getting out there and rectifying the mistakes we made in those

first games.”

After beating the Stormers in their last outing seven weeks ago, the Lions are anxious to carry on from where they left off.

“In a perfect world, we wouldve ’ loved to have just a game or two straight after the Stormers win,” said Lions assistant coach Ricardo Laubscher.

“We felt, just the way we played against the Stormers, we were happy with our performance, happy with the momentum.

“Ideally, another game or two would have been perfect for us. The last three weeks went well, but they were tough, too. There’s an excitement and buzz. We’re just excited to play again.

“The set piece has been a priority. We’ve been happy with our defence.

“We were particularly happy with the four tries we scored in our previous game.

“In general, we just want to get back to our fitness levels and make sure our detail on attack is decent. We worked quite hard on that. Our kicking game in general has been a priority, too, because we want to play the game in the right areas.

“The Sharks will come with a helluva kicking game. We need to make sure that we’re able to deal with that tactic.”