Southern Kings<\/a> announced the team that will be taking part against the Lions at Ellis Park on Saturday, 9 February.<\/p>\nThe team is:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Backs:<\/strong> Elric van Vuuren, Marcello Sampson, Wayne Stevens (vice captain) Hadleigh Parkes, Siyanda Grey, Wesley Dunlop, Johan Herbst.<\/li>\n
- Forwards:<\/strong> Lizo Gqoboko, Boetie Britz, Grant Kemp, Tomas Leonardi, Darron Nell (captain) Rynier Bernado, Mpho Mbiyozo, Jacques Engelbrecht.<\/li>\n
- Replacements:<\/strong> Dane van der Westhuizen, Khwezi Mkhafu, Ross Gelbenhuys, Daniel Adongo, Thabo Mamojelle, Scott Mathie, George Whitehead and Scott van Breda<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Director of Rugby, Alan Solomons, said circumstances had dictated the nature of the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have taken a number of injuries to our players, which means that to a large degree the selection of our squad was taken out of our hands,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Solomons said following medical advice the following players were not available to field:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- S.P. Marais, who had only just been cleared for contact training sessions<\/li>\n
- Siviwe \u201cShakes\u201d Soyizwapi, who had suffered a back strain last week during practice, and was out for two to four weeks.<\/li>\n
- Demetri Catrakilis who was still recovering from a sore shoulder and who has only recently been cleared for full contact.<\/li>\n
- Shaun Venter, who was suffering from a groin strain following the match against SWD Franchise XV over the weekend.<\/li>\n
- Kevin Buys, who had a stiff back after the SWD game, and who had not been cleared by medical.<\/li>\n
- Virgile Lacombe, who popped a rib during the SWD game and who was out for three to six weeks.<\/li>\n
- Steven Sykes, who was still undergoing rehab following last season, and would not be played following medical advice.<\/li>\n
- Luke Watson had only just begun full training following his ankle injury last year, and would not be available following medical advice.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u201cThe positive from this though, is that circumstances have given us the opportunity to allow our wider squad to take part,\u201d said Solomons.<\/p>\n
Solomons said he was confident that Darron Nell would do well in the position of captain, having had to sit out previous warm up matches due to injury.<\/p>\n
\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today the Southern Kings announced the team that will be taking part against the Lions at Ellis Park on Saturday, 9 February. The team is: Backs: Elric van Vuuren, Marcello Sampson, Wayne Stevens (vice captain) Hadleigh Parkes, Siyanda Grey, Wesley Dunlop, Johan Herbst. Forwards: Lizo Gqoboko, Boetie Britz, Grant Kemp, Tomas Leonardi, Darron Nell (captain) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[1289,5],"class_list":{"0":"post-17870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-mype","8":"tag-port-elizabeth-2","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}