Kings must batten down the hatches

Undeterred by six consecutive defeats, unswerving Isuzu Southern Kings head coach Deon Davids says he will press the reset button during his team’s month-long Guinness Pro14 break.

After a dismal start to their campaign, the Kings are planning to hit the ground running when they face Edinburgh in Scotland on January 5 after a four-week break.

In their last game of 2018, the Kings were pipped 22-19 by Benetton Treviso at the Madibaz Stadium.

Only one win from 10 games has left the Kings at the bot tom of Conference B and facing a tough second half of the season.

“We will have a break now and regroup on December 27,” said Davids.

“The team will train until December 31, before we climb on the plane for Edinburgh on January 2. Once we arrive in Scotland we will just have a captain’s run on that side before our match at Murrayfield.

“We must just build going forward now. Hopefully the in jured guys will be back in January so we can look forward to a full field of players at training.

“The Kings need everyone in the second half because it is a tough programme we are facing. We need to step up from the first game of 2019 in Scotland.

“We will flush out this first half of the season. In our postmortem we will look at what we have done well and where we need to improve. The team will find priorities that we must attend to.

“For us it will be a restart when we come back in January and it will be totally new.”

Davids said his team were continuing to learn lessons in the European league as they struggle to make headway.

“I must commend Benetton on their defence which was excellent. They managed to keep us behind the advantage line, and at times we did not play smart enough.

“Maybe we could have snapped towards the blindside and use that as an opportunity. Benetton were very strong on their defensive open side.”

Davids will be hoping that a permanent forwards coach will be appointed to assist him in the second half of the sea son.

When former Kings forwards coach Barend Pieterse left to pursue his career in Japan he was not replaced.

In the interim, the Kings have been making the use of former Bok prop Robbi Kempson to drill their forwards on a consultancy basis.

Davids noted that there had been improvement in his team’s scrumming against Benetton.

“We worked hard on that in the buildup. The players who came in made a difference.”

The team will find priorities that we must attend to