The Southern Kings suffered their first big lose of the season when they went down 55 - 20 to seven times Super Rugby Champions Crusaders. The Kings have done relatively well in their 3 previous games against the Force, runners up from last year the Sharks and 2012 champions the Chiefs.
Looking at the game from Saturday Wimpie van der Walt and George Whitehead scored the tries for the Kings. Van der Walt scored his on the half time hooter converted by Demetri Catrakilis and George Whitehead had the last say in the game when he went over for the Kings second try, he also converted the try. Catrakilis were also successful with 2 penalty kicks, only missing a 43 meter kick.
Both teams kicked the same amount of times, 14 a piece but Crusaders did more attacking with their 51% possession. They ran 864 meters compared to the Kings 307 meters, which means the Kings had to make 230 tackles with an 80% success rate with Crusaders only successful with 78% of their 92 tackles.
The Kings back 3 did most of the running with Whitehead 53 meters, Sergeal Petersen 33 meters and Marcello Sampson with 29 meters. Among the forwards Engelbrecht did the most meters from 9 runs with 68 in total. He also joined 7 rucks and mauls, forced 1 turnover and had 1 line break. One area of his game he would not be proud of will be his defense, he missed 6 out of 16 attempts.
Bandise Maku were successful with all of his 8 tackles. Whitehead was as solid as a rock with 7 from 7 as well as young Rynier Bernardo landed all of his 11 attempts. Waylon Murray who returned to Super Rugby after his injury were successful with 6 from 6. Ronnie Cook made the most tackles but missed 3 out of his 21 attempts.
The Kings might have slipped up on defense and their handling let them down on most occasions but one thing that stood out was their play till the end attitude and they were rewarded with 2 tries for their efforts.
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