Some stats from the Brumbies game

The old saying goes "play until the final whistle", and that was exactly what the Southern Kings did against log leaders the Brumbies on Friday. They outscored the home team 4 tries to 2 with the bonus point try coming in the 82nd minute.

Brumbies coach, Jake White, said after the game, “I don’t think we played like that because we thought we were going to win, all week I’ve been saying that the only ones who are thinking like that are the media. It’s irrelevant to how we were thinking".

“They are a fairly typical South African side, very big forwards and a good quality goal kicker and we just gave them too many chances to come and get us."

Lets have a look at some of those chances.

The Kings managed to score 4 tries through Schalk Ferreira, Wimpie van der Walt and Cornell du Preez scoring the other two. George Whitehead missed 1 penalty but was successful with 3 conversions and Demetri Catrakilis converting the last try.

The Kings enjoyed 54% of the possession but only 40% of the territory, they only spend 1min19sec in the Brumbies 22, but had to defend for 4min32sec in their own 22.

The Kings won 6 scrums, 5 on their own feed and 1 from a Brumbies put in. They won 16 line outs, 12 from their own throw and 4 from the Brumbies, 1 Kings throw was not straight.

They managed 355 meters from 53 runs, compared to the Brumbies 622 meters from 107 runs. Most of the Kings runs came through tight forward play putting up phases. Cornell du Preez managed 65 meters from 7 runs and Jacques Engelbrecht 62 meters from 5 runs.

The Kings impressed yet again with their defense, making 166 tackles from 185 (90%) attempts. Wimpie van der Walt was leading the tackle column with 19 (95%), followed by Andries Stauss 18 (82%), du Preez 15 (94%), Waylon Murray 14 (88%), George Whitehead and Ferriera 13 (93% each) and Steven Sykes with 12 (100%).

Sykes and Engelbrecht forced 2 turnovers each and du Preez had 2 line breaks to add to his 2 tries.

The Kings are growing with every game, they starting to play and look more like a team that deserves to be in Super Rugby rather than a team that got in through a hand out. Like Alan Solomons said, “The thing about us is that we’re not a team of stars, we’re a star team,”