'Tank's war cry against visiting Mpumalanga

By BS MULAVI

National Rugby 15s coach Michael ‘Tank’ Otieno has made a rallying call to his troops for today’s second leg match against touring Mpumalanga Pumas from South Africa.

The visitors were 48-22 victors on Wednesday and this, Otieno says, may be bad news for them. "I think they are now going to come harder at us, because they now know we can play some good rugby if we want to," he said.

"We were able to score 22 points against them and they wont be taking us lightly on Saturday, but we have to rise to the occasion and play at our very best," he added.

Otieno feels the game will be made even harder for the players he will be fielding because of the standards the team that played on Wednesday had set. Otieno had mainly played fringe and upcoming players for the first test match and he is aiming at now putting out a full strength squad for the day.

"I think it will be hard for the boys because the standards set here on Wednesday were very high and that is something that we have to maintain and do even better on," Otieno explained.

One of the players who stood out on Wednesday was Harlequin winger Allan Omuka, the former Chavakali High School backline players proved quite a headache for the visitors, but he will be relegated to the bench as he gives Victor Sudi and Dan Weku a chance to also prove their worth.

Otieno said they had worked hard to try to correct some massive mistakes since their last game.

"We were weak on one-on-one tackles. We have tried to rectify this while also taking the initiative to work on our scrummages which were also very poor," he said.