Cape Schools Week: Day Three
There were some fiercely contested matches on the third and final day of the Cape Schools Week held at Paarl Gimnasium.
Grey High, Boland Landbou, and Queens College all had to fight hard for their victories, whilst hosts Paarl Gim and Wynberg Boys had an easier time of it.
Tony Stoops take a closer look at all of the matches:
Grey High 10-8 SACS
The early game on Wednesday 26 June 2013, the final day of the 2013 Cape Schools Week at Paarl Gim, went the way of Grey High, who withstood a determined second-half onslaught to pip SACS 10-8.
The game started at 8:00 under floodlights, which were doubly necessary, firstly because of the thick cloud layer over northern Paarl and, secondly, because the sun hadn’t bothered to rise yet.
With six minutes left of the first half Fourie was just short with a penalty, but SACS regained possession fairly quickly, just to see a ridiculously optimistic double skip-pass easily intercepted by Grey outside centre Thabani Mgugudo who sprinted all of 60 metres to dive over. Flyhalf Garrick Mattheus made no mistake with the conversion.
As the match moved towards its end, the slipperiness of both ball and field – the rain had decided to join the party by then – reduced proceedings to a comedy of errors as both sides sought desperately to score.
The Capetonians did manage to string together several phases towards the end, lock Robert Mylrea scoring a try that belonged to the whole pack.
Grey kept their structure for the remaining minutes, although the fact that they opted to kick a penalty in an attacking position into touch to end the match rather than run it showed that they had plenty of respect for the Young Ikeys.
Paarl Gimnasium 57-5 Muir College
Paarl Gim cruised to an extraordinary 57-5 win over Muir College
The hosts camped in their opponents' 22 metre area for virtually the entire first half, during which they ran in eight tries, six of which Wyatt Murphy converted to take him past the hundred-point mark for the season.
At half-time the two sets of team officials met and an agreement was apparently reached whereby Gym would put on all thirteen of the remaining players in their squad and the game would be terminated after a further fifteen minutes.
Queens College 16-15 Rondebosch Boys High
Rondebosch experienced the bitter taste of defeat for the third time at this year’s Cape Schools Week when they lost 15-16 to Queens College on the final day.
Rondebosch were unable to utilize their share of possession efficiently enough to derail a very workmanlike Queens team.
Leading 5-0 at the break thanks to a try by flank Luca Botha, the Canigou Carnivores couldn’t bare their teeth with sufficient effect to prevent their opponents from coming back to win a fairly even encounter.
Despite outscoring their opponents by two tries – scrummie Luke Houba got the other one – Bosch found themselves trumped, largely by the boot of Queens flyhalf Simon Bolze, who notched eleven points to go with outside centre Avela Jabase’s try. Hylton Gibson contributed a penalty and the conversion of Houba’s try to the Rondebosch score.
Boland Landbou 13-10 Selborne College
The lads from the Farm raised the eyebrows of just about everybody present when they came from behind to edge out the more fancied Selborne College team 13-10 in the final game of day three of the Cape Schools Week at Paarl Gim.
Written off after a thoroughly abject display against Grey High on Monday, the Hottie and Oloff brigade got their act together just as the spectators were starting to say their goodbyes to snatch a surprising, but well-merited, victory.
Two years ago Landbou astonished the Cape rugby fraternity when they beat a very highly-rated Selborne side in the Cape Schools Week in King William’s Town, so it would not be far off the mark to say the visitors might have been relishing the opportunity to set matters straight, and that against an apparently wounded foe, on this occasion.
Wynberg Boys 38-15 Dale College
Wynberg wound up the opening to the second half of their season as they did the first – with a full-house of victories at a festival – when they trounced Dale College 38-15 on the final day of the Cape Schools Week at Paarl Gim.
Justin van Winkel's side has gained many new supporters over the last few days with their direct, no-nonsense style of play. There are enough youngsters in their line-up (eleven or so Grade 11s) for Western Cape rugby followers to mark them down as a team for the future.
Source: stoopstats.co.za
