Beast Mtawarira says the Sharks are expecting a fiery encounter against the Bulls at Kings Park on Saturday.

The Sharks have returned from an indifferent tour where they started poorly with losses to the Rebels and Brumbies, but ended with a win against the Blues and a last-minute loss against the Hurricanes.

They will now face a Bulls side who are coming off a bye, having beaten the Stormers 33-23 in an impressive showing in Pretoria the week before.

Mtawarira says the Sharks have learned a lot from their tour and embraced a ball-in-hand approach.

‘This is going to be a cracker,’ the 32-year-old told Independent Media. ‘Their motivation is going to be huge, but so will ours. It was horrible when we lost those games in Australia, so we decided to rather go down fighting in New Zealand than to stand back and let the opposition control ­possession and the game.

‘We made a collective decision to keep the ball in hand. You can’t play rugby when you are doing all the defending, so we changed our mindset. No more defending and a lot more attacking.

‘We are a work-in-progress. We stuck to our guns and concentrated on getting a little better each week. And we have done it. It is going to be two dynamic attacks up against each other, and that means fireworks.’

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