When Grey beat SACS
In the final game of day one of the Grey High School Rugby Festival, SACS from Cape Town came up against the hosts, Grey High and the hosts ran out 32-12 winners.
Having defeated Grey last year at the Cape Schools rugby week, and having carried a large portion of this victorious team into this season, SACS must have felt the slightly more confident of the two sides heading into this encounter.
Although it had stopped raining by the time the 4pm kick-off arrived, the heavy showers prior to the game had turned the field into somewhat of a marsh, making handling the ball extremely difficult.
A Grey player dropping the ball off of the very first movement of the game was early evidence of this and the SACS players wasted no time in pouncing on the ball and effecting the first out of a long line of break-down penalties out of the Grey forward pack, thus handing flyhalf, Christopher Smith, his first shot at goal of the game which he calmly turned into a 3-0 lead for his team.
Playing at home and with a full stand of support behind them, Grey were hungry to avenge the woes of last year and had to put this early laps in concentration behind them. Grey winger, Luyanda Odolo, affected their fight back with a massive hit on one of the SACS outside backs which sent the ball tumbling loose, only to be kicked through and picked up by Odolo who slid in for the first try of the game. Alex Banfield put the conversion through the poles and the scoreboard ticked over to 7-3 in favour of Grey.
Grey’s willingness to go wide even in the wet conditions allowed them to unleash their exciting backline on the SACS defence and saw them score two more tries in the first half; Sergeal Peterson in the number 15 jersey leaving the SACS players in the dust after a chain of crisp passes from Grey’s inside backs put him away and Odolo again being the recipient of another try that was the result of a SACS handling error and a clever little chip kick from Peterson.
Unfortunately for Grey their good work on attack was numbed by penalty after penalty which they gave away at the break-down on defence and allowed SACS to keep in the game through the accurate boot of Smith, who slotted four penalties in the first half. However, he wasn’t the only one who had his kicking boots on as Banfield put over a penalty of his own and two conversions for Grey, making the half-time score 22-12.
In the second half Grey seemed to take more control over the game. Strong running by the likes of locks, Gareth Ehret and Brandon Brown gave Grey a lot of front-foot ball, but the now alarmingly high penalty rate against Grey prevented them from turning this momentum into points. With the possession that they had, the SACS inside backs were beginning to combine well and break the Grey defensive line for the first time in the game. However, calm play from Peterson at the back for Grey meant that it would take a lot more for SACS to score a try past him.
Good defensive play from both sides put the game through a quiet passage of play for a lot of the second half, with a lone penalty from Banfield being the only action for the scorers. Grey scrumhalf Matthew Alborough was unlucky not to score a try when he was held up under the poles after he darted for the line after receiving the last of a string of passes which he himself had started with one of his dangerous snipping runs.
In the dying minutes of the game SACS fought hard to get to the Grey five-metre line in a last effort at scoring a try, but it was not to be for the visitors as Grey turned the ball over and handed paceman Odolo a full-length run of the field in front of his home crowd to score his hat-trick try under the poles.
Another Banfield conversion meant that the final score was 32-12 to Grey High, a fitting end to a great game of schoolboy rugby!
By Douglas Smith
