Kings coach remains positive

The match was the Kings' first Super Rugby outing since 2013 and Davids believes there were a lot of things to be pleased about.   

"There were good things and there were things we definitely need to improve on," said Davids after the match.

"If we look at the good things I think in the first half we were really competitive. I was happy with our forward play – I think we were good in our own line-outs and in contesting the opposition line-outs. I also think we stood our man in the scrums.

"I think we let ourselves down today in terms of execution. There was a lot of opportunities where we could have scored points."

Davids outlined a number of areas where his team needs to improve on if they are to remain competitive for the rest of the season.

"We definitely need to improve our kicking. I think we got good structures in terms of attack and defence and it’s just a matter of executing it properly. 

"I think overall its mainly three things that we will always evaluate. We will look at whether the mistakes we made was system driven, whether it was skills driven and the third will be in terms of effort," Davids added.

The Kings did not have the smoothest of preparations for this year's tournament, which was mainly down to a number of players joining the squad late.

However, Davids did not want to use that as in excuse for his team's loss.

"We don't want to be a team that makes excuses. I think we need to be very specific in terms of what went wrong, what was good and then we need to start that process to improve.

"As a team we need to grow, we need to stay together and we need to work out how we can be better."

By Warren Fortune

@FortuneWarren

@rugby365com