adminJeffrey Murimbechi Sports Correspondent
SOUTH Africa Academy players want to make a huge impression at the Zimbabwe International Sevens Invitational rugby tournament that gets underway at Harare Sports Club today. Five of the players who played for the South Africa Academy in last year’s tournament graduated into the national side and a fresh batch has been brought this time around.
“There are two Test players who’ve played in the IRB tournament and there are two slots open for players in this team to join the main team that will leave for Hong Kong on Monday,” said South Africa Academy head coach Marius Schoeman.
“We did not bring a no-name side, we have seven of these players who have been capped in the national team and the rest of the players are players that we see as the team for the future,”
South Africa Academy was beaten by the Cheetahs in the inaugural tournament in 2012.
Russia was expected to field two teams, a full strength side and their fringe development team but injuries sustained in their tour of South Africa affected most of their key players.
“We had a two week camp in South Africa and we lost some players to injuries, the camp also had the Kenya team and we lost so many players that we could not bring two teams anymore,” said Russian head coach Alexander Pervukhin.
“We brought a lot of players from our development side. The tournament is very important because we want to look at how our players are doing ahead of the Hong Kong tournament.”
Zambia’s national team won’t take part in the tournament anymore as initially planned resulting in another adjustment of fixtures.
Fixtures
Today Team 1 Team 2
South Africa vs Zim Goshawks
Russia vs Georgia
Zim Cheetahs vs Honk Kong
Russia vs Zim Goshawks
South Africa vs Hong Kong
Zim Cheetahs vs Georgia
Georgia vs Zim Goshawks
Hong Kong vs Russia
South Africa vs Zim Cheetahs
Tomorrow
Zim Goshawks vs Hong Kong
South Africa vs Georgia
Russia vs Zim Cheetahs
Georgia vs Hong Kong
Zim Cheetahs vs Zim Goshawks
South Africa vs Russia
Online Reporter