Kings not willing to be deposed

DESPITE three straight defeats, the Southern Kings are adamant they are not focusing on a possible "winner-takes-all" promotion-relegation showdown against the Lions in July.

But, behind the scenes, the Kings are quietly confident they have enough firepower to retain their Super Rugby berth.

"We are confident that if it comes down to a play-off game we can do enough to stay up," Kings director of rugby Alan Solomons said earlier in the season.

The question of having to face a promotion dogfight has been put to the Kings' management on numerous occasions, but they are adamant it is not an issue that they are focusing on.

After 10 matches, the Kings are bottom of the South African conference, 14 points behind the Stormers who have played a game less.

After the team returned from their overseas tour, Solomons made it clear that a promotion game was not something they were focusing on.

"We have not focused on promotion-relegation. We went into the season knowing exactly what lay ahead of us and we took a decision we would go game by game and break the season down into phases.'

Meanwhile, it seems that the Lions will have to rely on local opposition to keep themselves in shape for their shot at getting back into rugby's big-time. The planned "Lions Challenge", a series of matches scheduled against North American, Samoan and French opposition as well as against local Super Rugby franchises, is set to be trimmed.

Now the Golden Lions Rugby Union has cancelled more games against overseas opposition while the remaining fixtures against French opposition hang in the balance.

The union announced that while matches against Samoa, Stormers and Sharks would go ahead as scheduled, the match against Agen has been cancelled because of the French club's relegation from the French Top 14 league.

The match against a French Barbarians teams is also off, with the Lions now likely to face a South African Barbarians team on June 8.

The Lions have also cancelled their North American tour because of "concerns on the standard of the opposition" and have now set their sights on winning the Vodacom Cup.

The Lions have indicated they will play all their available players in their strongest side for Saturday's semi against Western Province.