St Albans Sign South African
International

St Albans Centurions have signed South African international winger Desi Kadima on a month's loan from London Skolars. The Centurions, who face fellow unbeaten side South London Storm in Saturday's National League 3 clash at Woollams, have taken Kadima for four week's to strengthen their back line and give the youngster some experience.

"Desi is a highly talented athlete and will make an excellent rugby league player," explained Skolars player-coach Alex Smits."But he needs to be playing at a higher level in the TotalRL.com Conference and at the moment his way is blocked in the Skolars first team by Ronnie Mushiso and Austin Aggrey. He needs to be playing and we have little doubt that he can hone his rugby league skills in NL3 with St Albans and come back to us a better player. I full expect Desi to be playing NL2 rugby with us before the end of the season."

The deal could be the first of several as St Albans and the Skolars work together to provide the right level of competition for individual players in the north London/Herts area, arranging deals of benefit to the players themselves and both clubs.

"The loan will be an initial period of 4 weeks albeit this might extend further depending on Desi's progress and everyone's satisfaction with the arrangement," added St Albans chairman Gary Tetlow. "This is a pilot scheme which both clubs hope to benefit from and I am sure Desi will not be the last player to take this opportunity."

Kadima, who played at St Albans for the South African Wild Dogs as they reached the final of the MX9s Preliminary Event a fortnight ago, is expected to make his Centurions debut in place of Dene Miller - the Centurions top try scorer broke his thumb against Sheffield Hawks last Saturday and will join glandular fever-stricken prop Alex Murphy, loose forward Adam Cox, second rower Graham Lumley and full-back Steve Toon in sick bay.