DRAGONS forward Rynard Landman has a few reasons to be excited by the addition of South Africa’s Cheetahs and Southern Kings to the new-look Guinness PRO14.

Not only is second row Landman upbeat about the effect the two former Super Rugby sides will have on the league, he has a connection with both.

Port Elizabeth, where the Kings are based, is the 31-year-old’s hometown, while he is also a former Cheetahs player – Landman moved to Wales from the Bloemfontein team in 2014.

It was while at the Cheetahs that he played alongside current Dragons scrum-half Sarel Pretorius.

The 2017-18 season sees the Dragons in the same conference as the Kings, with the teams clashing at Rodney Parade on September 30 and then the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium early next March.

This season sees sides play each other home and away in their own section and then the teams in the other group either home or away.

That trip to Port Elizabeth for the Dragons is their last intra-conference encounter before the Cheetahs visit Newport later the same month.

Giving his take on the revamped competition, Landman said: “It’s quite exciting. I played for the Cheetahs with Sarel and I come from where the Kings are in Port Elizabeth, it’s my hometown.

“I think it’s good for the two teams, for their players playing here, and it’s especially good for the northern hemisphere players to play against the southern hemisphere.

“People are scared of change but I think it’s going to be for the good.

“Both the Kings and Cheetahs play an expansive game of rugby, they score a lot of tries, and they leak a lot of tries as well.

“We’ll go out there and probably play in 28 to 30 degrees, the ball in play will be a lot longer, and it will be a good week of touring as well.

“We (the Dragons’ South African players) know the way they play, the way the players are and the style they play, so we’ll try and help the team to get the better of them when we go to Bloemfontein and Port Elizabeth.”

He added: “I think I read that nine of the Kings players left with a few playing Currie Cup rugby for other South African teams.

“So they are going to the other South African teams and asking for their fringe players to play in the first part of the season.

“The Cheetahs will be the stronger side of the two to start with, but the Kings did an amazing job in Super Rugby this year. They ended up above the Blues, the Bulls and the Cheetahs.”

It’s English champions Exeter Chiefs for the Dragons tomorrow in their third pre-season outing under new chief Bernard Jackman.

And after the heavy losses to Montpellier and Northampton last weekend, Landman feels it’s time for the Dragons to really kick on ahead of the new campaign.

“It was a strange weekend because we split our squad in two, we had all the travelling and a lot of young players played for us,” he said.

“Exeter Chiefs are a quality outfit, we played them last pre-season as well and we know what they bring to the table.

“We have obviously got different structures so we need to step up after those first two games.

“We need to bring loads of energy and leave everything on the field.”