Sunwolves change six for Stormers

Editor

Sunwolves head coach Jamie Joseph has made six alterations to his starting line-up for Saturday’s encounter with the Stormers in Hong Kong.

In the back-line, Fumiaki Tanaka takes over at scrum-half from Yutaka Nagare, who wore the number nine jersey in the Tokyo-based outfit’s 63-28 victory over the Reds last weekend.

There are two further injury enforced changes in the backs with Akihito Yamada coming in to replace Hosea Saumaki, who scored a hat-trick of tries against the Reds, on the wing and Kotaro Matsushima takes over from Semisi Masirewa at full-back after the latter dislocated a finger.

Saumaki is sidelined with a rib injury which is expected to keep him sidelined for two weeks.

In the forwards, Kazuki Himeno has been ruled out due to a wisdom tooth extraction with Willie Britz taking his place at number eight while Sam Wykes replaces Wimpie van der Walt at lock and Shintaro Ishihara is preferred to Craig Millar at loosehead prop.

Sunwolves: 15 Kotaro Matsushima, 14 Akihito Yamada, 13 Timothy Lafaele, 12 Michael Little, 11 Kenki Fukuoka, 10 Hayden Parker, 9 Fumiaki Tanaka, 8 Willie Britz, 7 Edward Quirk, 6 Michael Leitch, 5 Grant Hattingh, 4 Sam Wykes, 3 Takuma Asahara, 2 Shota Horie, 1 Shintaro Ishihara
Replacements: 16 Jaba Bregvadze, 17 Craig Millar, 18 Hencus van Wyk, 19 Uwe Helu, 20 Yoshitaka Tokunaga, 21 Yutaka Nagare, 22 Yu Tamura, 23 Jason Emery

Date: Saturday, May 19
Venue: Mong Kok Stadium, Hong Kong
Kick-off: 13:15 local (05:15 GMT)
Referee: Nic Berry (Australia)
Assistant referees: Shuhei Kubo (Japan), Tasuku Kawahara (Japan)
Television match official: Minoru Fuji (Japan)