Durutalo, Leonardí to start for Sunwolves

Both the USA and Argentina are to be represented as the Sunwolves play their first pre-season game against a Top League All-star team on Saturday. Andrew Durutalo and Tomás Leonardí are to start for the Sunwolves, playing as the team’s flankers.

30-year-old Shota Horie will captain the Japanese Super Rugby franchise from hooker. He is one of eight Japanese players in the run-on team. Seven other countries have one player each with Japan’s Rugby World Cup 205 rivals Samoa, South Africa and the USA each having one starting player.

The Sunwolves are the only Asian team in Super Rugby and will play in African conference 1. Joining them will be South African franchises the Bulls, Cheetahs and Stormers. Argentina’s franchise, the Jaguares will play in African conference 2 with the Kings, Lions and Sharks.

The Sunwolves will play host to the Lions in Tokyo on the opening weekend of the competition on February 27.

SUNWOLVES
1 Keita Inagaki 2 Shota Horie (capt.) 3 Shinnosuke Kakinaga 4 Tim Bond 5 Hitoshi Ono 6 Tomás Leonardí Andrew Durutalo 8 Ed Quirk 9 Atsushi Hiwasa 10 Tusi Pusi 11 Yasutaka Sasakura 12 Yu Tamura 13 Harumichi Tatekawa 14 John Stewart 15 Riaan Viljoen

16 Koki Yamamoto 17 Futoshi Mori 18 Shohei Hirano 19 Yoshiya Hosoda 20 Shinya Makabe 21 Fa’atiga Lemalu 22 Kaito Shigeno 23 Ryuhei Yamanaka 24 Hajime Yamashita 25 Masataka Mikami 26 Ziun Gu 27 Liaki Moli 28 Kazuhiko Usami 29 Daisuke Inoue 30 Derek Carpenter 31 Mifiposeti Paea 32 Akihito Yamada