Durutalo back to face Cheetahs

Andrew Durutalo is back in the Sunwolves starting lineup to face the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein on Friday. Four changes in all have been made to the side that lost to the Stormers in Cape Town last week, with four further positional switches.

Durutalo lines up at openside with Ed Quirk reverting to no8 and Argentina’s Tomás Leonardi shifting to the blindside in a strong looking loose forward trio. Liaki Moli moves into the second row to replace suspended Timothy Bond and Hitoshi Ono fills in for injured Shinya Makabe at the other lock spot.

Tusi Pisi makes a welcome return at flyhalf, with Harumichi Tatekawa recalled in the midfield and Mifiposeti Paea pushing out to the wing in the absence of Akihito Yamada, another victim of injury. Samoan international lock Fa’atiga Lemalu is set to make his Super Rugby debut from the bench having overcome the knee injury that knocked him out of the World Cup.

The Sunwolves are currently on the bottom of the table with only three losing bonus points from six games. This will be the second meeting between the two sides, with the Cheetahs coming out on top by only one point in Singapore a month ago.

SUNWOLVES
1 Masataka Mikami 2 Shota Horie (capt.) 3 Takuma Asahara 4 Hitoshi Ono 5 Liaki Moli 6 Tomás Leonardi 7 Andrew Durutalo 8 Ed Quirk 9 Yuki Yatomi 10 Tusi Pisi 11 Mifiposeti Paea 12 Derek Carpenter 13 Harumichi Tatekawa 14 Viliami Lolohea 15 Riaan Viljoen

16 Takeshi Kizu 17 Ziun Gu 18 Shinnosuke Kakinaga 19 Fa’atiga Lemalu 20 Yoshiya Hosoda 21 Kaito Shigeno 22 Yu Tamura 23 Yasutaka Sasakura