After a quiet season the G1RA teams will be hoping to get up out of the ashes like the phoenix of old. The G1RA management struggled hard last season with internal problems concerning the German Rugby Board and finances but have now managed to organize themselves to be competitive again from now on.
The Transvaal Lions are not in the Alliance anymore and quite a few experienced players have left Berlin for other pastures. The positive thing is that the Berlin Wallbangerz now have an almost complete German squad. Captain Alexander Widiker who will soon play his 200th Match said:
“we have built up a huge amount of quality German players and we are sure we can compete on the pro scene.We only have a small player depth but it is enough. We showed that as we almost won the Europa Cup and also played in the World cup again.”
Narbonne has released only a few players to bring in some youth and will be hoping to reach promotion after the past season. The Kings on the other hand had a less than convincing start to their WFR introduction. Solly the Kings coach said: “We have to be honest, we have so many young players, mostly between 19 and 22 and the lack of experience is our Achilles heel. We have now had 1 season to acclimatize and this year we will be looking to adapt and take some consequences from what we have learnt. Hopefully that will be enough to make it into the top half of the log. We knew it will be a long journey until we see results but at the end, not only we profit also the South African rugby fraternity because we are investing in the future stars of the country!”
The G1RA teams will be meeting in Berlin for a pre season tournament playing each other once with the Winner being crowned with the G1RA Cup. Details to follow…