Gates wants to focus on ball in hand

NEW EP Kings skipper Shane Gates wants his team to play an exciting brand of running rugby when they face a Golden Lions XV in a friendly at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium today (kick-off 5pm).

“This is definitely a good chance to for us to get hands on the ball and play an exciting brand of rugby,” Gates, who is leading the senior team for the first time, said.

“It is a chance to get some game time under the belt and test the combinations and get into sync with one another and build on that.

“We are going to focus on what we want to do.

“We have just brought in Brent (Janse van Rensburg) as defence coach and he has started working with us.

“We plan to stick to our process and get some hands on the ball,” Gates said.

“I want to thank the coaching staff and management for believing in me and making me captain.

“It is a massive honour to captain your province.”

Kings head coach Mzwandile Stick said his team were planning to improve their driving mauls against the Lions.

“We had problems with our driving mauls against Cheetahs and also had problems stopping the driving mauls,” Stick said.

“This week forwards coach Darron Nell has put time in on driving mauls and hopefully this week they will become better.

“We are getting back senior players this week with experience like Tom Botha, Lizo Gqoboka and Martin Ferreira up front.

“This means Darron is close to where he wants to be with his starting line-up. It will be a different outfit for us.”

-George Byron