Kings to throw everything bar kitchen sink at visitors

POTENT prop Ross Geldenhuys has promised that the Southern Kings will throw everything at the Brumbies in a Super Rugby clash at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium on Saturday.

The Kings, on a high after beating the Sharks, will be gunning for a fourth consecutive Super Rugby win after beating the Waratahs, Melbourne Rebels and the Sharks in their previous games.

“We are going to throw everything into this game and, as our loose-forward Chris Cloete always says, we will give it 120%, although I don’t know where he gets that extra 20%. But we will definitely give it 100%,” said Geldenhuys.

The frontranker has predicted that the Kings will face a massive battle in the scrums.

“The Brumbies pack reminds me of a big South African team that has big men in the back five and in their frontrow. We have got another big battle ahead for us.

“The Brumbies also have a good maul, so we are going to have to stop that. At scrum time, we have to have a big scrum. All eight must scrum and hopefully we will reap the rewards.”

Geldenhuys said there had been a lot of off-field interest in the week leading up to the Sharks clash, but it had not affected the team.

“There was lot of hype which made it like a sort of Test match. For us, though, it was just a normal win.

“We believed we could do it and we just needed to stick to our systems and play really well against a good Sharks team.”

The prop said the narrow 19-17 defeat to the Sharks in Durban earlier in the season has been painful.

“We were hurting from the last time we played them and that did not help with the emotions. We had to clear our heads before we ran on and a few guys said some things.

“It was a really good win because we wanted to beat a South African team and we owed them one from last time.”

Geldenhuys said his team had always had strong belief even before their winning streak started.

“We have had this belief from the first game. The structures were all new to us in the beginning, although other Super Rugby teams had one or two years or even 10 years experience. They also had only one or two new players coming in.

“We had had to learn everything new and it took time for us to know what was going on. I feel we have had the belief the whole time and the winning is pretty cool at the moment.”

Earlier this week the Sanzaar foul play review committee said Geldenhuys had not been issued any further sanctions after a third yellow card against the Sharks.

“The committee conducted a detailed review of all the available evidence on all three incidents, including video and referee reports,” Sanzaar said.

“With respect to sanction the committee deemed that no further sanction was appropriate due to the fact that both the second and the third yellow card offences were for technical offences, with the third card relating to repeated team infringements.”

Said Geldenhuys: “I have looked at the yellows and I have apologised to my team. It has been really disappointing, this third yellow. I think my discipline is really good.

“It has been for team infringements and then obviously the next penalty someone goes to the bin and it’s been me. I have let the team down.”