Griquas to build on qualifying success

Griquas may be without a handful of players, but still managed to name a settled team for their Currie Cup opener.

They will welcome the defending champion Sharks to Kimberley on Saturday, as South Africa's premier domestic competition gets underway.

New Griquas coach Hawies Fourie, speaking to rugby365 ahead of their Round One outing, revealed that five key players are out injured.

Fullback Gouws Prinsloo, loose forward Jonathan Adendorf, hooker Martin Bezuidenhout and lock Stephan Greeff will be sidelined for the next fortnight.

Loose forward Leon Karemaker tore cruciate ligaments and will be sidelined for most, if not all, of the season.

The flipside is that the core of their Super Rugby players - prop Nicolaas van Dyk, hooker Ryno Barnes and scrumhalf Tian Meyer - returned from the Cheetahs a while ago and have featured in the last two rounds of the qualifying tournament - which saw Griquas edge the Leopard by a solitary point to regain their Currie Cup status.

Having lost their place in the Currie Cup competition - in a two-match promotion relegation series against the Pumas - Griquas were thrown a lifeline when SARU expanded the competition from six to eight teams and introduced the pre-season qualifying competition.

Griquas did not need a second invitation and will once again feature in the Premier Division.

"The last two weeks of the qualifying competition all our players came back so we could regain our place in the Curie Cup competition and the Cheetahs also did not have much to play for in Super Rugby," Fourie explained the reasoning behind the return of their Super Rugby players.

All those players will feature in the starting XV against the Sharks on Saturday.

"Through the qualifying competition we had six tough weeks," he told rugby365, adding: "The standard of the opposition may not always have been the same, but the pressure was huge on us to qualify.

"It would have been a huge blow for the union and the team if we had failed to regain our Currie Cup status. It was good to have that pressure, as it helped the players to cope and make the right decisions in tough conditions.

"We also had six weeks of good preparations that we can take into the Currie Cup competition."

Griquas: 15 Nico Scheepers, 14 Danie Dames, 13 Jonathan Francke, 12 Wayne Stevens (captain), 11 Rocco Jansen, 10 Francois Brummer, 9 Tian Meyer, 8 Carel Greeff, 7 Hilton Lobberts, 6 Marnus Schoeman, 5 Jaco Nepgen, 4 Willem Serfontein, 3 Nicolaas van Dyk, 2 Ryno Barnes, 1 Steph Roberts.

Replacements: 16 Simon Westraadt, 17 Ewald Van Der Westhuizen, 18 Hugo Kloppers, 19 RJ Liebenberg, 20 Abrie Griesel, 21 Marais Schmidt, 22 Edries Arendse.

Date: Saturday, August 9

Venue: GWK Park, Kimberley

Kick-off: 15.00 (13.00 GMT)

Referee: Craig Joubert

Assistant referees: Lourens van der Merwe, Francois de Bruin

TMO: JJ Wagner

By Jan de Koning