“The Simbas are prepared for the match against Hong Kong this Sunday.” says Head Coach Ian Snook.
They kicked off their Repechage campaign with a 65-19 loss to Canada, a team that Kenya has never played before in the 15s version of this sport. This coming Saturday at 3:00pm, they will face off with Hong Kong in what will be their sixth meeting. The two sides first played against each other in 2016 at the Impala Grounds on the 23rd of August and then on the 27th of the same month at the RFUEA grounds with Kenya winning both matches 24-18 and 24-17 respectively.
The two sides met one year later at the RFUEA Grounds; Hong Kong seemed to have done their homework when playing The Simbas since the first match ended in a 19-19 draw while the second one saw Hong Kong fly back home with a 43-34 win.
Later on, in November 2017, The Simbas traveled to Hong Kong for the Hong Kong Cup of Nations and Simbas yet again fell to the hosts losing 40-30.
Going by this information, Ian Snook strongly believes that the team will be more confident when they take on Hong Kong this Saturday bearing in mind that they have played them before. “They are a good all-round team who are well organised and have several attacking threats so we will need to step up a few levels in our game in all aspects if we are to beat them.” said Snook in reference to Hong Kong.
Post the Canada match, Snook had this to say, “The set pieces went okay after the initial hiccup at the scrum. We had some good attacking opportunities but were a bit rusty and made too many mistakes. The big work on has been maintaining our phase attack and defensive patterns.”
The Simbas Team taking on Hong Kong will be named tonight.
