This weekend the Body & Mind Kent Crusaders both have to deal with the start of League play and a National Cup matchup with defending Division 1 winners Worthing.

On Saturday the Crusaders take on Leicester Warriors in a rematch of their Patrons Cup clash earlier this season. Crusaders lost this game by 2 points so will be looking to turn this result around in their opening League game of the season.

Coach Mads Olesen again highlighted the Leicester forwards as a key to this game “The key to the game for us is to stop the Leicester big men from getting the ball inside. When we played them in the Patrons Cup, they were able to get the ball inside, where they were too big for us to deal with. On the other hand we need to exploit our quickness, and put Leicester under pressure at both ends of the court.”

The hero from last weekend Steve Findley said “We’ve got to do a better job of dealing with their size to win this game. With a couple missing we’ll need good contributions from everyone”.

The game takes place at the Body and Mind Leisure centre with tip off at 7:30
Sunday the Crusaders face the challenge of playing at the Division 1 winners Worthing. Last season the Crusaders also played Worthing in the cup, and the side lived up to their “Thunder” nickname. Kent Crusaders lost 59 to 114, despite great encouragement from the home crowd at Canterbury high school.

The first quarter was disastrous for the Crusaders seeing the champions tear them apart from the first whistle. The Crusaders were down 10-0 in less than two minutes and Worthing were up by 24-0 before the home side disturbed the scoreboard. The gulf in class between the sides was evident with the first quarter ending 41-6 in favour of the visitors.

This year the Crusaders will take the Thinder on at Worthing. Head coach Mads Olesen says about the game “We’ll come ito this game like we do any other game: With the intention of playing as hard as we can for 40 minutes, and see what that brings us”.

Crusaders are missing four players for this weekend’s games. Big men Sam Betts and Dan Garrad are doubtful with injuries and the home team will also be without captain Pete Ayling and key player Robbie Parker. If the home team want to get a result they are going to need the rest of the team to step up.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Game Previews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.