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The Southern Kings have named an unchanged starting XV from the team that narrowly lost their final warm-up game to Griquas for Saturday’s historic Super Rugby opener against the Western Force in Port Elizabeth.
Kick off at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium is at 7pm.
Ten-thousand tickets have already being sold for the King’s Super Rugby debut and organisers are expecting a crowd of between 30 and 35-thousand people on the night.
Luke Watson will captain the team from the base of the scrum and says his chargers are fired up to deliver in front of the Eastern Cape rugby faithful.
Watson says while the Kings will go in as underdogs, he is comfortable that everything possible has been done to prepare the team properly for one of the biggest days in the history of Eastern Cape Rugby.
The team is:
15 SP Marais; 14 Marcello Sampson; 13 Ronnie Cooke; 12 Andries Strauss (vice captain); 14 Sergeal Petersen; 10 Demetri Catrakilis; 9 Shaun Venter
1 Schalk Ferreira; 2 Bandise Maku; 3 Kevin Buys; 6 Cornell du Preez; 4 David Bullbring; 5 Steven Sykes; 7 Wimpie van der Walt; 8 Luke Watson (captain)
Replacements:
16 Edgar Marutlulle; 17 Jaco Engels; 18 Daniel Adongo; 19 Jacques Engelbrecht; 20 Johan Herbst; 21 George Whitehead; 22 Hadleigh Parkes
Pic at team announcement: Bandise Maku, Luke Watson and Andries Strauss
