St John’s Festival, Day One Wrap
Stand-in scrumhalf Brandon Keevy was the stand-out with a hat-trick of dot-downs. However, the very cold weather and incessant rain certainly did not help handling or accurate passing at times.
In the second matchup of the day, it was the blue, white and dark blue hoops of Paarl Boys’ High making their 22nd appearance at the St John’s College Easter Rugby Festival against debutantes Eye of the Tiger, and they produced a champagne performance to celebrate it by running in eight tries capped off by some wonderful kicking at the uprights by flyhalf Henry Chamberlain.
Parktown Boys’ faced Combined High Schools of New South Wales based just outside Sydney in Australia. The lads from Down Under were certainly not assisted when they were given a yellow card just six minutes into the game. This gave Parktown the opportunity to run in three unanswered tries in that time. But in typical Australian fashion, the NSW side came roaring back in the second half and ran out of time going down 26-19.
In the most exciting match-up of the first day, Afrikaans Hoer featuring no less than seven players in their match 23 that weighed 100+ kilogrammes were pushed as hard as possible by Pietermaritzburg’s Hilton College. Even though the final score was 17-6, the big boys from Pretoria will know all about the ferocious tackling from the young men in all white.
As is customary, Paul Roos pulled out all the stops and surprised by taking apart a game Nelspruit who could manage only two penalties while the Stellenbosch school ran in six tries aided by wonderful goal kicking from Colia Louis who converted four tries and two penalties.
And in the last clash of the day, St John’s College strangled a fired up Florida team with a half-time scoreline of 10-6. One of the most exciting flyhalves in schoolboy rugby in 2017, Kieran Houlston, scored all the points with two tries, one either side of half way, which he converted plus two penalties to make the final score 20-13 for the home side.
From Jacqui Deeks
