Odera picks positives from Simbas narrow loss in Currie Cup

The national men’s 15’s side, Kenya Simbas had a rollercoaster game after overturning a 17-0 deficit but were unlucky to lose the game 21-20 to Zimbabwe Goshawks in the Currie Cup First Division with head coach Paul Odera picking positives from the encounter.

Simbas are playing in South Africa's rugby second-tier competition, which they are using to prepare for the Rugby World Cup qualifiers that is slated for 1st-10th July.

KCB RFC technical bench heading to South Africa for training

The game also brought two nations who are seeking to seal a place in the 2023 Rugby World Cup as they will join Namibia, Uganda, Algeria, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Ivory Coast in the qualifiers.

After the narrow defeat to Zimbabwe, Simbas head coach Odera was impressed at how his side responded to poor lineouts in the opening minutes and their attacking pattern.

“We were a bit wobbly from the lineouts in the beginning but when Brian Waraba came on, we got 200% of the line outs so those were some of the good things we looked at, what I'm really pleased with as well is that we had an attacking pattern that was easily read but the players were able to adjust and we were successful on the gain line.

We did some fantastic line breaks, unfortunately, we were just not able to finish them off, in defense we were working on improving our line speed, I think we allowed Zimbabwe a bit too much space and as a result, they were able to score three tries and we need to look at that,” said Odera.

The result now means Kenya have suffered back to back losses after being hammered 51-14 to Valke Falcons in the opening match of the campaign and played against the Western Province Under 20 side a fortnight ago in a friendly.

Odera highlighted areas of improvement when they take on Griffons on Saturday 30th April as the latter will be looking to return to the summit of the log as they have won their opening two fixtures.

Africa 7s tournament exposes shambolic Shujaa as alarm bells grow louder

“We need to improve our chop tackle technique, our game management also needs improvement, we made two crucial mistakes after we scored, one was a charge down which allowed Zimbabwe to get a pushover try and the other was being able to use the wind and keep territorial pressure.

Our second match was to see how close we have got to Zimbabwe who have been here for six weeks and I think we saw that their organization outside the field has been first class. Our target was to be more disciplined and have a penalty count of 10 or less which we achieved.” Concluded Odera.