Hard hit-out anticipated

TAKING ON THE LINE: Poverty Bay first five-eighth Jake Holmes has a run against the Hawke’s Bay Saracens in 2017. Picture by Paul Rickard

The Hawke’s Bay Saracens should provide a stern test for Poverty Bay in Gisborne tomorrow and that could be helpful for the home side.

Poverty Bay coach Tom Cairns is expecting a “hard hit-out” against the Saracens at Rugby Park — Poverty Bay’s last pre-season rugby game before their Heartland Championship campaign begins.

“We need to be tested,” Cairns said.

“It will help us find the standard.”

Cairns said some front-line players who didn’t play last week against Central Bay of Plenty would get a run tomorrow and Poverty Bay would try out more combinations.

But they would also fine-tune tactics and structures.

Poverty Bay scraped together a 24-22 win in Rotorua last week.

Tomorrow’s game kicks off at 1.30pm.

A curtain-raiser between the Poverty Bay Development team, the Tuatara, and the Wairoa sub-union has been cancelled because of travel problems.

Games that were to be played today as part of the McDonald’s under-13 development series will instead run tomorrow at Rugby Park as the curtain-raiser.

Poverty Bay’s first game in the Heartland Championship is against the Thames Valley Swampfoxes at Paeroa on August 24.