Warm-up game for the Steval Pumas Vodacom Cup is tonight and you are invited

“After four months of intense training, the boys are eager to take to the field. This match is a great opportunity for both of the teams to settle certain players into their positions. For us this match will be taken as a serious training session, thus we are taking all our players to give them some game time. Not only will this be an opportunity to see how the new members fit into our game plan for the year, but can we really test our players’ game fitness levels too. You can do as many fitness sessions you want throughout the pre-season, but it all boils down to actual game time.,” MJ Mentz, newly appointed head coach for the Vodacom Cup series commented.

“Playing against the Shumba Ferros will give their coaching staff some indication of their team’s fitness and skill levels too, as the organisers of the Cell C Community Cup foresee that the 2015 series will be the toughest yet. Obviously it gives us an opportunity to bring the game to our communities further away from Nelspruit and this will be the first match in eMalahleni since we left the city a couple of years ago,” Mentz concluded.

“We look forward to the challenge. We are all loyal Steval Pumas supporters and to play against them will be an honour and give our team some inspiration to further their rugby careers. We urge the Witbank (eMalahleni) and Middelburg communities to come and support the match and come and meet the teams face-to-face,” Willie Oosthuizen, coach of Shumbas Ferros Shumbas said.

“We have a very young team who will be competing in the club championships this year and tomorrow’s game will give us a good idea how the youngsters will handle teams like Despatch and Durban Collegians. We look forward to the performances of our younger players like Dylan Pieterse (u19 lock), Ruben Opperman (inside centre) and Mzwakhe Fransman (wing). Other members of our team we look forward to see in action are Gerhard Munro (fly half), Shane Agrella (scrum half) and off course our old hand, Christiaan Els will play a huge role in keeping the young guns together,” Oosthuizen concluded.

The Steval Pumas will play with a two-team, one-game attitude. The first half team will be captained by Eduan van der Walt, whilst the second half captain will be Lambert Groenewald.