Kings pin hopes on No 9’s fitness
SCRUMHALF CONCUSSED IN SINGAPORE Franchise have a mountain to climb at King’s Park.
The Southern Kings are holding thumbs that the experienced Louis Schreuder will be ready to travel to Durban with them for this week’s Super Rugby coastal derby against the Sharks reports supersport.com.
Schreuder suffered concussion early in the good win over the Sunwolves in Singapore in week two of the competition and was forced to miss the 41-10 defeat by the Stormers at the weekend.
However, according to the Kings medical staff, the former Stormers player is making good progress and there is some confidence that he will play.
Lock Mzwanele Zito is also likely to be available this week as he returns to training, while another two locks, Wandile Putuma and Sintu Manjezi, will be back in the fray today but are only likely to be available to play again in a couple of weeks. The Kings’ second row crisis was eased considerably when Irne Herbst returned to training last week and Wilhelm van der Sluys was recruited from English club Worcester Warriors.
However, while those are all positives for the Kings, there is some negatives to report, with centre Luzuko Vulindlu being added to the list of concussion casualties at the franchise in the match against the Stormers.
Vulindlu, who was making his first start of the season after playing the early matches off the bench, will miss the clash with his former team-mates this weekend. The Kings are likely to recall Berton Klaasen for Vulindlu. Klaasen and Waylon Murray, another former Sharks player, played the first two matches together.
The Kings were competitive for long periods of their match against the Stormers, with Chris Cloete making a massive difference as he returned to the starting team to wreak havoc to the Stormers’ breakdown work in the first hour of the game.
Thembelani Bholi was also responsible for winning two turnovers in the first half, but it was at the breakdown where they suffered the most.
The Stormers did get a telling advantage at the scrums and their lineout work is always good, and their finishing ability when opportunities presented themselves was a big factor in the wide margin of their victory.
The Kings are clearly still a work in progress and have a lot to work on if they hope to be competitive at King’s Park, where they conceded more than 50 in the corresponding match last year.