When George goes to Riversdale

It's always a pleasure to travel down to the picturesque Oakdale Agricultural College, with its rolling grounds and numerous oak trees, and is always a very tough place for visiting teams to play. And this year was no exception for Outeniqua High School. While losing the majority of the other games, their first team came away with a comfortable win, 32-7.

It was a reversal of the last couple of year's contests where Oakdale where the victors.

This was always going to be the big game in the Southern Cape this year to define who would have bragging rights in this area. I say this with the realisation that there are still a few league games to go, but I don't think either Langenhoven Gim or Oudtshoorn have the goods to beat Outeniqua this year.

But to the rugby and what a great game of rugby it was. The score line doesn't really reflect the game as accurately as one might think. I don't have the possession stats but I would think that Oakdale probably had slightly more possession than Outeniqua and this is indicated by the scrum/lineout stats where Oakdale had by far the lion's share. Outeniqua again had problems in the line-outs with four of their first six being stolen by Oakdale with their locks Donovan van der Berg and Jurgen van Staden being menacing in this area and not losing a single ball that was thrown to either of them in the first half. Outeniqua did pull this back a bit during the game and again looked particularly comfortable when throwing to Jurgens Schoeman at 2. This Outeniqua lineout unit is the SWD unit as well and I fear that they will continue to have difficulties at that higher level.

The scrums were quite evenly contested and the battle between the much vaunted Oakdale front row and the Outeniqua one was an even one. The scrum count was quite skewed in Oakdale's favour but I don't believe there was a single tight head in the match.

The Outeniqua loosies were, as always, brilliant and once again Tinus Vermeulen led from the front for Outeniqua, tirelessly tackling, carrying the ball up and being a general nuisance to the opposition. Jeandré Rudolph, the Oakdale No.8, is a really good player and he and his SWD teammate, Tinus, had a ding-dong battle all afternoon. He, Rudolph, did spoil his report card though by being yellow-carded for berating the touch judge for a call he didn't agree with. Never a good idea to argue with the officials.

In the backline both teams ran well at each other and the tackling was good. Outeniqua has persisted with Dewald 'Japie' Human (10) and Marius Venter (15) swapping on defence. I reported on this last week and this had made an enormous difference to the defensive structure of Outeniqua. Testimony to the fact that the Oakdale score was 0 until just a few minutes from the end. While the centre play was good there were some interesting things to note on the wings. Remu Malan again played wing and while he was quite satisfactory things did seem to hot up when Reynard van der Nest (last week's five-try scorer) came off the reserve bench after Leighton 'Soda' Eksteen (9) had been stretchered off and Remu moved to his usual position of scrumhalf. Reynard scored a try moments after coming on which had to do to largely with his individual brilliance. He also had many incisive runs and his all-round positional play on defence is very good. He does seem to knock on with the goal line winking at him on occasion though. This defensive awareness of his though does seem to be lacking to a degree in the other wings of Outeniqua.

Outeniqua does need to be concerned about their Penalty count though as it was 7-13 against them. Add the free-kicks and it was 17-9. That's a lot of ball to give away.

All in all a great game of rugby and kudos to the players of both teams that had earlier in the week practiced together with their SWD hats on and then made the switch to tackle each other today.

A final note of thanks to Oakdale for a great venue and a very welcoming atmosphere.

The scorers:

For Outeniqua:

Tries: Dewald Human 2, Reynard van der Nest, from maul (possibly Jurgens Schoeman)

Cons: Leighton Eksteen, Warwick Galant

Pens: Warwick Galant 3

For Oakdale:

Try: Donovan van der Berg

Con: Arno Moolman