Sunwolves to have a biltong flavour for new Super season
Two SA players in squad
TWO South African players will be lining up for Japan’s Sunwolves when they face the Southern Kings in a Super Rugby clash in Singapore on March 4.
Hard-working former Lions and Cheetahs loose forward Willie Britz is a new inclusion in an ambitious Sunwolves squad that have high hopes for the new season.
He joins South African fullback Riaan Viljoen in a Sunwolves lineup that will be looking to improve on last year’s showing, when they managed to win only one of the 15 matches they played.
Britz has been playing for Japanese club NTT Shining Arcs since 2015, and has made a big impression in the Japanese league.
Last year the Kings beat the Sunwolves in Port Elizabeth, and they will be targeting the Japanese outfit for another vital victory.
In that game the Kings built a “brick wall” defence against the Sunwolves on their way to clinching one of only two wins in the season.
New Sunwolves head coach Filo Tiatia has named a well-balanced squad for what promises to be a gruelling campaign.
Another new signing is scrumhalf Fumiaki Tanaka, who played for the Highlanders in recent seasons. Hard-running Akihito Yamada, the team’s star winger who scored nine tries in the Sunwolves’ debut season last year, is a surprise omission.
It will be Tiatia’s first season in charge since taking over from Mark Hammett.
The Kings open their campaign against the Jaguares in Port Elizabeth on February 25 before travelling to Singapore.
The Sunwolves kick off their season by playing the defending champions, the Hurricanes, in Tokyo on February 25.
Following the Hurricanes game, the Sunwolves will spend four weeks away from Japan, beginning and ending in Singapore with two games in South Africa in between.
The Bulls visit Tokyo on April 8, before the Sunwolves head off on a trip that will see them play three games in New Zealand and one in Buenos Aires.
Following a week off, Tiatia and his men then travel to Singapore to play the Sharks before returning to Tokyo to take on the Cheetahs.
When the Kings players return from their break next week they will ramp up their training before heading off to East London for a training camp. The Kings will play warm-up matches against Border, the Stormers and the SWD Eagles.
The Sunwolves squad: Keita Inagaki, Masataka Mikami, Koki Yamamoto, Takeshi Kizu, Takeshi Hino, Shota Horie, Takuma Asahara, Heiichiro Ito, Koo Jiwon, Hitoshi Ono, Kyosuke Kajikawa, Shinya Makabe, Liaki Moli, Willie Britz, Edward Quirk, Uwe Helu, Yoshitaka Tokunaga, Shuhei Matsuhashi, Malgene Ilaua, Yuhimaru Mimura, Keisuke Uchida, Takahiro Ogawa, Fumiaki Tanaka, Kaito Shigeno, Yuki Yatomi, Harumichi Tatekawa, Hikaru Tamura, Yu Tamura, Hayden Cripps, Teruya Goto, Kenki Fukuoka, Timothy Lafaele, Derek Carpenter, Yasutaka Sasakura, Kotaro Matsushima, Riaan Viljoen.