Kings played with heart and character.

The Southern Kings went down 55 points to 20 in their match against Crusaders in Christchurch on Saturday. It was the Kings first match away from their fanatic Port Elizabeth crowd and also their first overseas game.

The Crusaders simply outclassed the Kings in every area of the game, and the Kings struggled to defend the attacking wave after wave from the 7 times Super Rugby Champions. The Kings had some moments with ball in hand but on a night where their handling let them down they caused no threat to the Crusaders.

“The guys played bravely. The Crusaders are a very good side. They have five guys in their starting fifteen that are All Blacks, playing guys like (Daniel) Carter and (Kieran) Read who are probably the best in their positions in the world, and (George) Whitelock is pretty close to that, as is (Owen) Franks,” said Director of Rugby Alan Solomons.

“So you know, we were up against it and I thought the guys did really, really well. Obviously it was made difficult by the travel, but we’re not making any excuses about it,” he said.

Solomons was happy with the Kings effort that they have put in and playing for 80 minutes.

“We stuck to the task and at the end of both halves we got a try and I think the guys have learnt a massive amount in playing in consecutive weeks probably the entire, or close to all of the All Black side. A lot of experience was gained, and we must just take this forward now and obviously we’re settling in and look forward to the Hurricanes game next week,” he said.

Matt Sexton, Head Coach of the Kings, also added: “I think we got a little bit of a lesson in possession, momentum and a couple of other things, but in saying that though the one pleasing aspect of the game was again the character shown by the boys."

“They certainly put on an 80 minute performance; they played with heart and character.”

“It was a truly international team that we came up against and they were pretty hungry to get four points and put us to the sword, so to speak. It was a tough game and we’ve had a bit of a disruptive week obviously, with things, but no excuses."

Sexton also had lots of praise for the conditioning team and getting the guys to perform like they have since the start of the competition.

“A lot of credit has to go to our conditioning team, Johan (Pretorius) and Steve (McIntyre), who prepared the guys fantastically well, they were still going in their 80th minute after all the travel and stuff that we’ve had,” he said.

Crusaders were scoring at a point a minute in the first half and it seemed like the Kings did not have enough players on the field to defend against them. The Kings did look better towards the end of the game after Crusaders made a few changes to their run on 15.

“We shut them down a little bit quicker in the second half but I think one of our biggest problems we had in the game, was we turned over too much ball."

“There was just far too much, both from general play and we turned over a few from set piece... but general play we just turned over too much ball. And when you turn over the ball, you just don’t have it for ten minutes. So that was a valuable lesson to be learnt."

“The things we have to work on is the value of possession. We have to cut our error rate,” Solomons said.

The Kings will have no real injury concerns has they prepare for their next match against the Hurricanes and might just have Steven Sykes and Andries Srauss back, as their experience were surely missed on Saturday.