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Kings slay Dragons for first Pro14 win
By Peter Thompson
Luzuko Vulindlu scored a try in each half as the Southern Kings finally claimed a first Pro14 win with a 45-13 drubbing of the Dragons on Friday.
The South African side had lost all of their 16 matches in what is a maiden Pro14 campaign for the former Super Rugby franchise.
But they put the Dragons to the sword in the battle of the bottom two in Conference B at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium to get up and running at long last.
It all started so well for Bernard Jackman's Dragons, Dorian Jones taking a superb offload from Lewis Evans and racing away for an opening try which he converted after slotting over an early penalty.
The Kings hit back with a try from Vulindlu and they led 14-13 at half-time after Masixole Banda chased down his own kick over the top and took advantage of a mistake from Ashton Hewitt to dot down.
It was all one-way traffic after the break, the home side running away with it as Vulindlu, Ruaan Lerm, Anthony Volmink and Bobby de Wee crossed to keep the Dragons waiting for a first away win in three years.
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Stephen Larkham, Mick Byrne, Scott Wisental, Ben Mowen, Les Kiss, Jim McKay, Rod Kafer.
There are plenty of great Australian coaches who could do a better job than Schmidt.
Go to commentsThis piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.
I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.
Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.
The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.
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