The Kings team to take on the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein on Friday night has been announced, with a few changes to the team from their win over the pumas last week to lift the Currie Cup First Division trophy.
Stand in captain Darron Nell took a knock in the championship winning match, ruling him out of probably the two most important matches for the Kings with centre Wayne Steven chosen to lead the team.
Wesley Dunlop replaces George Whitehead in the pivot position, a switch that leaves Whitehead on the bench and allows Dunlop to continue the great partnership he has built with Oelschig in the halfbacks.
Schalk Ferreira took a heavy knock to the head and is replaced by Jaco Engels in the front row, while Tiger Mangweni is being rested (how you rest a player for this game makes very little sense) and is replaced in the backline by Shane Gates.
EP Kings: 15 SP Marais, 14 Paul Perez, 13 Wayne Stevens (captain), 12 Shane Gates, 11 Marcello Sampson, 10 Wesley Dunlop, 9 Falie Oelschig, 8 Cornell Du Preez, 7 Wimpie van der Walt, 6 Devin Oosthuizen, 5 David Bullbring, 4 Reynier Bernardo, 3 Clint Newland, 2 Hannes Franklin, 1 Jaco Engels.
Substitutes: 16 Frank Herne, 17 Andre Schlechter, 18 Wayne van Heerden, 19 Mpho Mbiyozo, 20 Scott Mathie, 21 George Whitehead, 22 Michael Killian.

Go Kings! 😈
Don’t see this lot beating Cheetahs in Bloem
Go Kings!!! Let’s silence the critics lads
I dont see the cheetahs getting beaten by this team.
Cheetahs 53
Kings 11
Cheetahs 42 – 17 Kings
So the team from the centre of tranforming rugby only play 5-6 non-white players in their match 22’s? What’s up with that mr. watson?!
@JD (Comment 7) : non-whites, what the hell are those? ROB!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dear Megatron the point is mr. watson snr is a hypocrit!!! Telling all who would listen how to transform rugby but now that he’s got the chance to do it he does the same as all the other unions.
@JD (Comment 9) : are you complaining about the number of non-blacks in the team?
No, just saying talk is cheap if you don’t have anything to lose. Not so easy to drive transformation if you can lose curie cup or super 15 place. Transformation is a reality but not so easy to do in a winner driven world.
@JD (Comment 11) : watch the next generation of Kings in the u21 ranks before you say anything, transformation won’t happened over night, our propaganda against Watson makes us say dumb things sometimes
please leave the transformation and race discussion out of it. It is not tolerated as per the site rules.
You need something like this up there in your logo:
http://www.scottgustafson.com/Gallery_LEP_A1.html
but jokes and evil aside, it’s a pretty sad state of affairs when one of our SR teams has to play in the B-division. They should cancel this stupid p/r game and just include the Kings in the CC. They should have done it several years ago.
@fyndraai (Comment 14) : the rules are clear. If you want the addresses of rugby sites that allow you to dabble in politics, they are available on request. Trust me, there’s no shortage
@Mutley (Comment 5) : Close 😎