Coach still mulls over Kings team

Southern Kings head coach Deon Davids is still scratching his head over his Super Rugby starting lineup to face the Jaguares in less than two weeks.

Davids said he thought he would have had more clarity after the friendlies against the Border Bulldogs and SWD Eagles, but that he needed more time to make key decisions.

“Our focus this week will be to establish our starting team,” Davids said.

“We have an idea of what we want and there were one or two players who stuck their hands up in the friendlies and one who two who did not take their chances.

“I thought Mazakole Mapimpi did well and he was good with ball in hand. There were one or two things without the ball that he can improve on.

“I liked the energy that a guy like Malcolm Jaer brought to the game when he came on. He looked good.

“Scrumhalf Louis Schreuder also did well, but I do not want to single out players. Towards the end, I think prop Schalk van der Merwe also really brought a lot of energy.

“The idea was to give the guys that played against the Eagles as much game time as possible so that we can get a balance with game time and build from that.”

“So we will have to see how it goes in the training sessions so we can make 100% certain of our choices.

“I thought there were areas where I would have had more clarity, but there are one or two that I still need to sort out,” Davids said.

“This week we will address that stuff and hopefully have one more contact session against the Varsity Cup side the Madibaz.

After the 42-24 win over the Eagles on Saturday, Davids said his team had battled to maintain continuity; it was an area that needed to be worked on.

Davids said hard work lay ahead of the Kings before they tackled the Jaguares in their opening Super Rugby match in Port Elizabeth on February 25.

Loose forward Chris Cloete was withdrawn from the Kings team on Saturday after taking a knock to the head in training on Thursday.

Over the past seven days, four Kings players have sustained concussions.

Irne Herbst, Neil Maritz and Cloete sustained concussions during training, while flyhalf Pieter-Steyn de Wet sustained a concussion during the SWD Eagles game.

They are all going through the return-to-play protocol this week.

Winger Wandile Mjekevu joined the team at full training yesterday after recovering from a foot injury.