Listen to This Article Enhance your reading experience by listening to this article.

Kenya Simbas need to be at their best to make headway in the ongoing Currie Cup in South Africa according to head coach Paul Odera.

Speaking shortly after Simba’s slim 22-21 loss against Zimbabwe, Odera pointed at scrums and line-outs as major lessons picked from the more advanced southern Africa opponents. This was their second consecutive loss after the first loss to Valke Falcons at the Bosman Stadium in Brakpan.

 “Our match against Zimbabwe was an opportunity to see how close we are with them given their quality. We have to remember they have been here for six weeks in camp as opposed to us who have only been here for a fortnight. The match was always going to be close no wonder the result but I took note of some errors which we have to improve going forward,” Odera said.

Penalty count

The coach urged his team to be disciplined in their approach adding their target is getting a penalty count of minus 10 which they had already achieved.

Kenya has lost some players to injury which is a concern but Odera believes that it is an opportunity for other players to show their worth. 

“We have a pool of 35 and even though we are missing key players, I believe the rest will stand up and be counted. We will be playing without Ian Njenga, Darwin Mukidza, Andrew Simiyu and John Nyambua all of who are recovering from various injuries. However, squad rotation is imminent so we will see what we can do,” added Odera.

Odera said that with greater improvement on line speed and drop-tackles, the Simbas could have a good tournament. He decried the challenge of game management which proved costly for them. 

“We had fantastic line-breaks but in defence, we needed to work on our line-speed better because we allowed Zimbabwe too much space thus scoring three tries. We also need to improve on our territory play because certain mistakes came about due to errors,” the tactician.