Barbarians open with a victory
The Barbarians – who hail from NMMU – made a successful start to their Steinhoff Koshuisrugby Championships campaign when they registered a narrow, but deserved, 8-5 win over UCT’s Steinhoff Cobras on Monday night.
A feature of the game was the stout defence of both teams in Port Elizabeth, with all the points coming in the first half.
The visitors opened the scoring early on in the match when flank Mathew Kelly crossed over for an unconverted try.
However, the Barbarians hit back quickly with a penalty by centre Lindsay Weyer and a try by flank Jarryd Perkin.
Though the Cobras came close to scoring on a few occasions in the second half, they were kept out by some desperate defence by the home team at the Xerox NMMU Stadium.
This was the second defeat suffered by the Cape Town students in the newly-instituted competition, having gone down 28-43 to Majuba (Maties) last week.
Centre Phiwe Lalendle impressed with his play for the home side throughout the 80 minutes.
The NMMU Barbarians will next play Majuba in Stellenbosch on Monday, March 9.
By Stan Terblanche
