Famous venues beckon for the Southern Kings
The Southern Kings will be clocking up thousands of air miles on their frequent trips to Europe during a marathon 21match PRO14 campaign.
Their regular season starts on September 1 with a match against Zebre in Italy and ends in April next year with a clash against the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein.
Along the way they will play at some famous venues, including a match against Edinburgh at Murrayfield.
The fixture list indicates the Kings will be playing all their home matches at the 46,000seater Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth.
The knockout stage of the competition begins in May, with the final scheduled for the 60,000-seater Celtic Park in Glasgow.
The home of the Scottish Premiership football champions Glasgow Celtic has never before hosted a rugby union match.
Kings captain Michael Willemse said he was pleased that the team had a nucleus of players to work with.
“It is good that we have kept a group of players who played PRO14 last season,” he said.
Twenty-five of the current 29 squad members played for the Kings when they could win only one match during a 21game season.
Protracted sponsorship talks have resulted in the Kings’ recruitment programme being temporarily halted.
The 14 teams will be split into two conferences of seven teams, with each conference featuring two teams from Ireland and Wales plus one team from Italy, Scotland and SA.
The first-placed team in each conference gets a bye to the semifinals and the secondand third-placed teams clash in two quarterfinals for the remaining two semifinal places.
The Kings and Cheetahs cannot compete in the European Rugby Champions Cup, though this may become possible in the future.
The top three eligible European teams in each conference automatically qualify for the following year’s Champions Cup.
The fourth-ranked eligible team in each conference will meet in a playoff match, with the winner taking the seventh Champions Cup place.
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