KZN balanced on a knife-edge
A clear-cut leader in the race to be crowned KwaZulu-Natal’s unofficial top team is yet to emerge. Heading into this weekend four schools, namely Glenwood, Maritzburg College, Michaelhouse and Westville are still considered to be joint leaders. Kearsney are also not entirely out of the contest either.
As a result two of the many games taking place this weekend are of almost equal significance in the overall unofficial title race.
Up on the Meadows in Balgowan, Michaelhouse welcomes Maritzburg College while in Durban, Glenwood is at home to Kearsney. Home ground advantage is expected to count for something but other than that picking winners from these two matches will involve more guesswork than science.
The Michaelhouse-Maritzburg College game is expected to produce an intense team contest in all departments on the field. Sadly this clash has been robbed of one of the most eagerly anticipated attacking head-to-heads of the season. Michaelhouse’s strike centre Michael Mvelase would have come up against Daniel Kriel, the Wildeklawer backline player of 2012, had the latter not sustained a nasty shoulder injury against KES. Kriel has been ruled out of rugby for at least two months. As a result College has promoted Murray Janse van Rensburg to inside centre and shifted the effective Ricci Bamber to outside centre. The injury to Kriel perhaps means the pick of the one-on-one battles will now be between the two very different styled No.8s. Here the mobile and creative Josh Moon of House has been on top of his game in recent weeks, while ever-improving ball-carrier Reegan Smith, a Bulls post-school acquisition target, is known for his good rugby-brain and positional awareness.
Glenwood and Kearsney are two teams that have been operating below their best in recent weeks. Although neither team will want to peak just yet, there is little doubt that both camps are seeking a positive about turn in form and obviously the all-important result to go with it.
The Green Machine needs to settle and find some long overdue rhythm in their attacking game. As a result Unathi Makasi and Warren Potgieter, despite both enjoying their old roles, switch positions to flyhalf and fullback respectively.
High up on Glenwood’s agenda this week has also been the managing of player fatigue, the result of a grueling 2012 schedule to date. In this regard Glenwood concedes that if they wish to be counted amongst the top national rugby schools, they have to continue finding ways to pit their talents against the best this country has to offer without overburdening their players.
Kearsney has had to make a three injury-enforced changes. Two relatively inexperienced players in the form of lock Jayson Hirshovitz and flank Jarred Hayes-Hill will quickly have to find their feet in what could turn out to be a fast-paced and physical game. The biggest setback for the Highways team has to be the forced absence of livewire fullback Matt Reece-Edwards, who was responsible for injecting a lot of energy when joining the line. Josh Devine will now move into the last line of defence. Some good news for the visitors is that Tyler Smith is fit again and takes up his place at inside centre.
Apart from getting their brand new personnel to gel in the set-up, the key for Kearsney remains to reinvent themselves as a team with greater variety and more ambition on attack. News filtering through suggests that a game-plan with more specific roles assigned to players including the newly promoted ones is on the cards, definitely adds to the hype for this big match.
Westville are at home Pionier from Northern Natal. It’s a match the hosts are expected to win quite comfortably. Pionier did caused one of the biggest upsets of the South Africa season last year when they beat Westville 26-22 in Vryheid. However the 2012 Pionier team is not as strong as their 2011 giant-killing team was. With a trip to Jozi to meet the might KES coming up next, high up on the Westville preparation list for this game will be putting good structure in place while trying avoiding complacency and injuries.
Northwood seemed to click in their second half against Westville a fortnight ago and carried that form through 70 minutes of action at Glenwood last week. So although both matches ended in defeats, spirits are very high in Durban North at the moment. Visitors Hilton College would have reassessed the difficulty rating of playing this Northwood team on current form and will surely be ready to meet the challenge. One should expect Hilton to try and gain a foothold by winning the battle upfront before using their talent in wider positions. Northwood in turn have to place a lot of emphasis on retaining possession and smart tactical kicking out of hand, in their attempts to cause an upset.
Based on the trend the DHS see-saw ride should reach its high point once again against St Charles. After an outstanding effort against Kearsney last weekend, DHS were all except convincing in their midweek 17-0 win over Clifton. St Charles could turn out to be a handful. The Pietermaritzburg team has some good players as well as a useful set-piece playbook to work off.
Port Natal might have been overwhelming favourites to beat Clifton at the beginning of the week but following the Morningside private school’s encouraging DHS result, there is no good reason why Clifton should not be in it to win it on Saturday.
How they do it? That has to be the question asked about George Campbell. The match against Voortrekker will be an incredible game number 19 of the season and we are just reaching mid-May. Precious few defeats and steamrolling some teams that would have provided stern competition to the technical school in previous seasons, has to make George Campbell the KwaZulu-Natal overachievers of 2012.
Northern Natal’s top team Sarel Cilliers of Glencoe, who could quite easily hold their own against some of the big guns closer to the coast, takes on Ladysmith. Sarel Cilliers have recently returned from a successful tour of Zimbabwe where they won all three games.
Adults please remember that setting a good example starts with respecting the referee. Enjoy the rugby.
By Beet
