Centre Josh Boulle will captain the Stormers XXIII in their SA Rugby U23 Cup match against the Vodacom Bulls XV at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday.
Following their 21-10 win against the Sharks U23 at Kings Park in the opening round, Boulle’s team head north this weekend without any of their Junior Springboks.
Boulle is joined in midfield by Bruce Sherwood, with Ezekiel Ngobeni on the wing in place of the injured Suleiman Hartzenberg and Asad Moos and Kyle Smith the halfback pairing.
Keke Morabe will have Aden da Costa and a fit-again Divan Fuller alongside him in the loose trio, while there is an all-new tight five with Alex Groves and Adam de Waal at lock and props Mhleli Khuzwayo and Herman Lubbe starting either side of hooker Vernon Paulo.
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Coach Labeeb Levy said that with so many forced changes, the challenge will be to find some fluency between the various combinations.
“With the Junior Springboks unavailable and a few injuries from our first match, we have had to change things up a bit, but we are excited to see how some of the new faces perform.
“It is always a tough encounter up in Pretoria and after a good training week we are ready to give it a full go up there. There were a few important lessons we took out of our first match in Durban, so hopefully we see an improvement in certain standards.”
Saturday’s match kicks off at 2pm.
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STORMERS XXIII – 15 JC Mars, 14 Ezekiel Ngobeni, 13 Josh Boulle (c), 12 Bruce Sherwood, 11 Mfundo Ndhlovu, 10 Kyle Smith, 9 Asad Moos, 8 Keke Morabe, 7 Aden da Costa, 6 Divan Fuller, 5 Alex Groves, 4 Adam de Waal, 3 Herman Lubbe, 2 Vernon Paulo, 1 Mhleli Khuzwayo.
Bench: 16 Scarra Ntubeni, 17 Matthew Beckett, 18 Hencus van Wyk, 19 CJ Gordon, 20 Aiden Norris, 21 Alutha Wesi, 22 Dominic Malgas, 23 Luke Burger.
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